Food for the soul in Gerry’s debut collection of poetry

Date Published: {J}

“I always wanted to be a poet but never felt I had the right to call myself one. I was always afraid of getting recognition on the back of my celebrity status as a chef,” says Gerry Galvin.

Gerry, who with his wife Marie, ran the famous Drimcong House in Moycullen for 18 years, should no longer have any fears on that front.

His debut collection No Recipe, published by Galway’s Doire Press, was launched by Michael D Higgins, TD, on Sunday in Sheridan’s on the Docks, when the former Arts Minister praised Gerry’s unusual depth of language, the precision behind his words, and the emotions his poetry evoked.

Having Michael D launch the book marked a real milestone in Gerry’s career as a writer, and completed a circle that began in 1992 when the TD launched The Drimcong Food Affair, Gerry’s first cookery book. Since then he has also written The Everyday Gourmet, but it’s only since he and Marie bowed out of Drimcong earlier this decade that he began to focus on his literary dreams.

Gerry, who is from Drumcollogher in Co Limerick, has been writing “forever”, having won a prize for Irish poetry at a Feis in the Curragh when he was 15 and at school in Newbridge College in Kildare. Poetry has always been part of his life, but a successful career in the hospitality industry took over.

“There was a time when I had to decide what way I wanted to go,” he remembers now. “We were in Kinsale, running a restaurant and I gave a winter to writing and made £11. With a young family I had to opt for something that was more financially rewarding.”

So he chose the chef route, although he never stopped writing.

“The problem was finding the time. As owner operators we had to put all the hours there were into the restaurant.”

But he doesn’t regret it. Gerry was one of Ireland’s top chefs and Drimcong House had a reputation for the quality of the food and the atmosphere of the restaurant in the elegant 17th century home. “It was a very satisfying life in many ways. When you are cooking you get immediate plaudits,” he laughs.

But, nearly 10 years ago, after 40 years in the business, the Galvins moved on. Gerry has emphysema and physically he wasn’t up to it anymore, he explains. Their three children were pursuing other paths and their parents decided it was time for them to do the same.

So they “hopped in a van and went around the world. It gave us a new perspective. And it was heaven for me”.

That time touring the world gave him the opportunity “for tossing around ideas and being playful. It was wonderful”.

Some of the poems in No Recipe record moments from this trip, while others stretch back over a 50 year period. And, like any poet, certain themes recur in the work, with relationships and nature.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.