The Florio Society meets to appreciate its members’ own poems: the traditional form of the meeting invites anonymous contributions on a set theme and/or subject. These are duplicated, circulated at the meeting and read aloud. Critical discussion follows. There have been, and still are, occasional departures from this procedure (prose meetings, no set requirements, waiving of anonymity, etc) but they have been proved to work less well. There is an annual feast cooked by the members themselves, and an annual punt outing. In the 1960s and 1970s the Society invited famous guests to a different sort of annual dinner (Auden, Pinter, Porter, Murdoch). In the 1980s several hand-printed booklets of Florio poems were published by the Sycamore Press. The Secretary appoints his or her successor in Hilary Term.

Magdalen College - University of Oxford.