10,000 visitors stock up on their winter supply of Ontario-grown garlic, savour garlic-inspired chef creations paired with garlic cocktails, mocktails & garlic beer, get free garlic shots, discover garlic jellies, sauces preserves, ferments & hand-made crafts, & enjoy Culture Talks and Live Music. They join the Garlic Bulb Cracking Contest & watch the Vampire Costume Contest. They cheat at the Garlic Breath Contest & take home a personal poem from the Garlic Poet Laureate. Free Admission! All Activities are free. One Day Only. Rain or Shine. All Garlic at the Toronto Garlic Festival is Ontario-grown.
Visitors can expect witty, garlic-inspired wordplay from Poet Laureate Haley Sarfeld, with pungent puns, tangy tongue-twisters, and on-the-spot riffs. Each guest will leave with a personalized, handwritten (cursive!) poem — a fragrant keepsake from the Toronto Garlic Festival.
BIO: Haley Sarfeld (she/they) is a writer, performer, poet, composer-lyricist, and all-around allium enthusiast living in Katarokwi/Kingston. Haley writes everything from crossword puzzles to theatre reviews to musicals about mythical serpents and neighbourhood cats, and she enjoys on-the-spot riffing with pungent puns and tangy tongue-twisters. In 2024, Haley was the recipient of a Nathan Cohen Award for Excellence in Theatre Criticism (Outstanding Emerging Critic), and she is honoured to be this year’s Garlic Poet Laureate at the Toronto Garlic Festival. Her favourite early summer snack is garlic scape pesto.
Photo credit: Donovan Perra (@donovan.perra)
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