Vibe: Historic Art Deco | Heroic & Panoramic | Literary Hilltop Hub
Coit Tower stands as a 210-foot monument on Telegraph Hill, completed in 1933 using funds bequeathed by Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the city she loved. Lillie was a legendary figure in San Francisco, known for her lifelong devotion to the city’s volunteer firefighters, and the tower’s Art Deco design is often said to resemble a fire hose nozzle in her honor. Beyond its striking silhouette, the tower’s base is home to a series of vibrant frescoes painted in 1934 as part of the Public Works of Art Project. These murals, created by 27 different artists, provide a fascinating and sometimes controversial window into the social and political life of Depression-era California.
The Coit Tower Poetry Club meets on the first Friday of every month, serving as the final stop of the vibrant North Beach First Friday Poetry Crawl. This gathering is a raw, community-focused tribute to San Francisco’s deep literary roots, specifically honoring “SF poetry legends” in an open-air setting.
Coit Tower hosts this monthly ritual on its back lawn, offering a unique “punk poetry” atmosphere that feels like a trip back in time.
The Schedule: The reading typically begins at 9:00 PM and lasts until around 11:00 PM, concluding a night of literary events that start earlier in the evening at City Lights Bookstore.
The Experience: Participants often read under the glow of flashlights or scattershot building lights; the vibe is described as “poetry for the sake of poetry,” featuring everything from readings from bullet journals to memory.
Featured Work: Each month usually centers on a specific legendary poet—past readings have celebrated figures like Rosemary Manno, Jack Micheline, Lew Welch, and Aimé Césaire.
Accessibility: The event is free and open to the public, with an open mic segment often following the featured readings. Attendees are encouraged to bring their “whole preposterous self” and perhaps a blanket for the lawn.
Join the Coit Tower Poetry Club with a reading of Cara Vida featuring the San Francisco-based performance artist and poet known for gritty, collage-style spoken word and performances on the back lawn of Coit Tower.
Coit Tower Poetry Club presents an evening of Langston Hughes — gathering on the back lawn beneath Coit Tower to read and celebrate the work of one of the foremost voices of the Harlem Renaissance, whose jazz‑inflected, socially conscious poems spanned from the 1920s through the 1960s. Drawing from pieces featured by the Poetry Foundation...
Join the Coit Tower Poetry Club for the June installment of their First Friday residency on the back lawn of Coit Tower. This month's featured poet turns toward the spare, searching voice of Robert Creely (1926–2005). A central figure in the Black Mountain poetry movement and a close collaborator of Charles Olson, Creeley wrote with...
Join the Coit Tower Poetry Club for the May installment of their First Friday residency. This month, the gathering turns toward the restless, insurgent voices of Mario Santiago Papasquiaro (1953–1998) and Leopoldo María Panero (1948–2014), two poets whose work challenges convention through intensity, fragmentation, and a refusal of polite literary boundaries. The Featured Poets Mario...
Join the Coit Tower Poetry Club for the April installment of their First Friday residency. This month, the gathering focuses on the work of Lucille Clifton (1936–2010), an American poet celebrated for her spare, powerful language and her exploration of the endurance of the human spirit. The Featured Poet Lucille Clifton was a prolific author...
Vibe: Surrealist Nightfall | Candlelit Verse | Telegraph Hill Magic Join the Coit Tower Poetry Club for a specialized installment of their First Friday residency. This month, the club gathers on the back lawn of Telegraph Hill to read the works of Joyce Mansour (1928–1986), the Egyptian-French author celebrated as the most significant woman poet...
Join the Coit Tower Poetry Club with a reading on the back lawn of Coit Tower. This month’s featured poet, Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957) Bio: Gabriela Mistral (the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga) was a Chilean poet, educator, and diplomat who became the first Latin American author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. Born...
Join the Coit Tower Poetry Club with a reading on the back lawn of Coit Tower.
Join the Coit Tower Poetry Club with a reading on the back lawn of Coit Tower.