Join Matthew Byrne, Ron Hynes, Randall Maggs, David Michael, Lisa Moore, Nino Ricci, Nico Rogers, Agnes Walsh, and Baxter Wareham for the second installment of March Hare West, the Toronto leg of the 2011 March Hare. Saturday, March 5th at 2 PM at Brass Taps, 934 College St., Toronto, between Ossington and Dovercourt.

The March Hare, Atlantic Canada’s largest poetry festival, originated probably in 1988 as an innovative but inauspicious winter entertainment at the Blomidon Golf and Country Club in Corner Brook, Newfoundland.1 That an important literary event should owe its birth to three golfers attempting to generate business for their local club during the bleak days of March might seem unlikely, but given that the begetters were poet Al Pittman, organizer Rex Brown and club manager George Daniels, it perhaps should have been expected. The March Hare was one of a series of events they concocted to enable the club to stay open during the long winter months – the Swish, Swallow and Swill Gournament, the Blomidon International Night, and the Great Tack’s Beach Growl Tournament – its original purpose not substantially more noble than theirs. Unlike the other events, however, the March Hare survived – survived the deaths of George Daniels and Al Pittman and a change of venue downtown to the Columbus Club – to become a unique trans-island celebration of words and music, involving seven events in three towns over five days, attracting writers from all over Canada and indeed the world, and featuring the best traditional musicians in Newfoundland and Labrador. . . .

Adrian Fowler, The March Hare Anthology

Join Matthew Byrne, Ron Hynes, Randall Maggs, David Michael, Lisa Moore, Nino Ricci, Nico Rogers, Agnes Walsh, and Baxter Wareham for March Hare West, the Toronto leg of the 2011 March Hare. Friday, March 4th at 8 PM and Saturday, March 5th at 2 PM at Brass Taps, 934 College St., Toronto, between Ossington and Dovercourt.