The Poetry Garden
Berkeley Garden
This garden honors Berkeley’s many innovative poets, poetry presses and publications, and their creative legacy. It was dedicated in 1999 on the second anniversary of “Beat” poet Allen Ginsberg’s death. Through their writings, the nonconformist Beat poets sought liberation from traditional social, political, artistic, and personal conventions. Ginsberg lived across the street in a now-demolished house at 1624 Milvia Street while writing, among other poems, parts on his once-banned work Howl!. Poet Gary Snyder also stayed there. “Beat Generation” writer Jack Kerouac lived for a time in a “rose-covered cottage” on Berkeley Way, and poet Robert Duncan also lived in this neighborhood during the 1950s.
The creation of the garden was a joint effort of students, teachers, and parents from Berkeley Arts Magnet at Whittier School together with neighbors and the City of Berkeley.
Marker is on Milvia Street just south of Lincoln Street, on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
