Ina Coolbrith Circle

The Ina Coolbrith Circle was a literary club begun in honor of the first poet laureate of Calif.

History

The Ina Coolbrith Circle was organized in 1919 in memory of Ina Coolbrith, California's first poet laureate. The stated purpose of the Circle was the study of the history and literature of California, the discussion of member's works, and the assembling and presentation of their personal and literary reminiscences.

The Circle was patterned after the California Literature Society, which was itself an outgrowth of a neighborhood youth club founded by Ella Sterling Cummins Mighels, a California literary historian. The California Literature Society was informal and met once a month at Coolbrith's home until 1916.

The Ina Coolbrith Circle met once a month, first at the St. Francis Hotel, then in the Assembly Room of the San Francisco Public Library, and later at the Western Women's Club. More of a social club than a platform for established poets, the Circle sponsored lecture presentations, poetry readings, musical programs and annual poetry contests. The members also maintained a library and engaged in campaigns to save Ina Coolbrith Park in San Francisco, to name a Sierra Nevada peak after Ina Coolbrith, and to prevent the state legislature from naming an unpublished poet (and member of the legislature) California poet laureate.

Ina Coolbrith was living in New York at the time the Circle was formed and met with its members for the first time in 1920. In 1923 Coolbrith moved back to California and, between then and her death in 1928, journeyed each month to the St. Francis Hotel to read poetry, discuss literature, and listen to lectures. The Circle continued after Coolbrith's death largely through the efforts of Ina Peterson Cooke and Ina Cook Craig, her niece and grandniece respectively.

Ina Coolbrith, J. D. Rhodehamel and R. F. Wood. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young Univ. Press, 1973.