A former San Francisco poet laureate and beat generation writer attracted an “overwhelming” crowd hoping to attend and hear him read poetry last night.

Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti received the New England Poetry Club’s (NEPC) annual Golden Rose prize and read his work to a packed Yenching Auditorium audience in an event co-sponsored by the NEPC and Harvard’s Signet Society.

NEPC president Diana Der-Hovanessian called Ferlinghetti “a vital voice” and an “American conscience” as she awarded him the Golden Rose.

The award has been presented since 1920 to the writer deemed by the NEPC to have had the greatest influence on American poetry in the past year or over a lifetime. Past recipients include Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, Czeslaw Milosz, Adrienne Rich, and Mary Oliver.

“The Golden Rose is very good luck,” said Der-Hovanessian, noting that several recipients have gone on to win Pulitzer and Nobel prizes.

Ferlinghetti read first from his older and better recognized works, including the 1958 collection, “A Coney Island of the Mind.” Midway through the performance, he began a multimedia presentation of post-Sept. 11 poetry: the American natural anthem and bird calls played beneath and between his stanzas, as Ferlinghetti raised and lowered the volume by hand for emphasis.

“What’s really amazing is that his work [from the 1950s] is still dynamic, resonant, and conscious today,” said Daniel Tobin, a member of the Poetry Club and chair of the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College.

The pieces Ferlinghetti selected addressed themes ranging from T.S. Eliot’s romanticism to his own upbringing in Brooklyn to what he called “the increasingly cataclysmic world of the 21st century.”

As founder of the San Francisco bookstore and printing house City Lights, Ferlinghetti was one of the earliest publishers of beat poetry. His own writing has long been regarded as politically and socially critical.

“He’s taking the clothes off society,” said attendee James Cross.

Robert M. Yribarren ’07-’09 said he was impressed by Ferlinghetti’s performance style.

“He was very free, very relaxed and sharing, like he was with old-time friends,” Yribarren said.