A weekend in Delvin for bibliophiles

This May, the Delvin Book Festival returns to the village on its traditional date, the Sunday of the bank holiday weekend. “We of course have the books,” said Norman Dolan, festival committee member: “We have a 40-foot container of books which have all been sorted.

“We’ll come along on the Friday evening and basically take over the village and take over the local hall, and we’ll transform our village into a massive festival.”

There will be around 30,000 books for bibliophiles to browse through on the day.

“It has been extremely successful,” said Norman. “We started it in 2010 and it has gone nationwide. People come from all over Ireland to it.”

The festival features more than books too – as Norman puts it, there’s something for everyone.

“We’ve started in the last three years presenting the talents from all the schools in the area.

We’ve built a little small stage out where the umbrella is in the village.

“Irish dancers also, and traditional music is all played there by the children from the village. It’s probably the best little move we’ve made since we started the festival.

“And we have a complete children’s section (of books) in the hall itself.”

This year, the festival is also set to feature a new section. “In one of the little shops, we have a specialist place where a book that’s worth €50, obviously we’re not going to let it go for €1, we’ll probably sell it at €5.”

For the most part, apart from the specialist collection, all books cost €1, and children’s books are 50 cent.

All of the books available on the day are donations, some from the public, others from interesting sources.

“We have a lady from Dublin who gives us books from Trinity College. She’s so good to us – she comes down about every three to four weeks and she has a full car of books for us.

“And in general, the public are very good to us as well.

“There are different companies who have lots of people working for them and they’ll have a book collection day as well.

“People give us the books, instead of them going to a landfill, the people donate books to us and we go through them and sort them and let people reuse them.

“Of course there are going to be some left over, and some might be slightly damaged during the day. So they’ll be sent off to another company called World of Books.

“Even if there’s a slight tear in a book, if it’s in good condition, it will be shown, but if it’s not in good condition, it will be forwarded to World of Books.

“They give us cents for the books but we don’t mind, nothing is being dumped.”

Those who would like to contribute used books to the event should note that the deadline is a week before the event, as all books have to be sorted and approved.