Founded in 1954 on the basis of a small donation by W. H. Auden, the Poetry Center presents some thirty public readings, performances, and lectures each year on the San Francisco State University campus and at various off-campus venues, featuring outstanding poets and writers from across the literary spectrum. The Poetry Center reading series is one of the longest-running such programs in the country, with roots in the 1950s San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. The center also houses the American Poetry Archives, a collection approaching five thousand hours of original audio and video recordings documenting the reading series.