The death of the publisher and poet Eddie Linden, aged eighty-eight, marks the passing of one of the most distinctive figures in post-war British poetry. Passionate literary advocate, formidable networker, vehement socialist, conflicted Catholic, vociferous homosexual, obstreperous friend – for nearly fifty years this indomitable bundle of contradictions was a presence on the poetry scene in London, in Dublin, in Edinburgh, in Glasgow.

Yet who was Eddie Linden? The story of his childhood and upbringing is well known, not only from Sebastian Barker’s biography of him, Who is Eddie Linden (Jay Landesman, 1971), but from Eddie himself, who was infamous for buttonholing strangers over a drink to relate who he was. Or who he had constructed himself to be. Such moments are beautifully captured in Gerald Mangan’s affectionate cartoon of Eddie, published in the festschrift in honour of his eightieth birthday, Eddie’s Own Aquarius, in which an enquiring Eddie looks up at a distinctly gruff God the Father while the archangel Gabriel nervously explains, ‘He says he’s a manic-depressive alcoholic lapsed-Catholic Irish working-class pacifist-communist bastard from Glasgow. And would you like to subscribe to a poetry magazine?’

That’s the legend. And of course in part the reality. The key to this legend is the poetry magazine, Aquarius. Until the age of thirty, Eddie led a life that can genuinely be described as picaresque, witness the definition here which could have been written of and for Eddie, ‘pícaro: the outcast who attempts to survive precariously within a hostile environment… the pícaro… devises pragmatic strategies of survival… not an outright rebel, but self-interestedly pragmatic and ready to do whatever it takes to survive on a daily basis.’

Born illegitimate to poor Catholic parents in an era when such an event brought down opprobrium and shame, Eddie grew up in the 1930s and 1940s as an unwanted foster child in Belshill, a working-class outlier of Glasgow. These were tough times and places, and Eddie was seriously disadvantaged even within that context. His education was skimpy and he never learnt to write fluently, although reading was a different matter: he was a classic autodidact and also a classic ‘foundling’ child, always looking for security and identity. He was restless too, with a succession of low-paid manual jobs, as a steel worker, miner (for which he was deemed not strong enough), British Rail porter; and a succession of lodgings, shifting constantly between Motherwell, Corby, where he had an uncle, and the seedier districts of London. And yet.

In his early adulthood Eddie identified with Communism as a substitute for the Catholic Church which for a time he felt had rejected him but which he never entirely rejected. Father Anthony Ross, whom he met at Laxton Hall near Corby, was an important influence in enabling Eddie to address the tensions between his homosexuality and his Catholic upbringing. Eddie went on to help found Catholic CND, with whom he went on the Aldermaston marches, and the Simon Community for the homeless in East London.

It was through gay friendships in London that he met John Heath-Stubbs and his circle, and through friends in the Catholic Labour movement that he eventually got a place at Plater College, Oxford, founded to offer education to people precisely like Eddie. Although he very quickly abandoned formal study, while in the city he did meet Roger Garfitt and the young poets Craig Raine and Sebastian Barker, son of George Barker and Elizabeth Smart and Eddie’s future biographer. It was a short step to the Colony Room and the bohemian atmosphere of Soho in the 1960s, not perhaps in its heyday but still very active. Soon Eddie was attending poetry readings, and, one day, he had the idea of publishing these poets himself.

This was the turning point. Harold Pinter helped with money, the name Aquarius was chosen (the musical Hair, with its trademark opening song, ‘The Age of Aquarius’, had just opened in London) and, because of the friendships Eddie had established, he was uniquely well placed to call on famous contributors, but also spot up-and-coming talent. The first issue, which appeared in 1969, contained work by the young Frances Horovitz, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Libbie Houston, Dinah Livingstone and Anthony Howell, as well as Thomas Blackburn and Michael Horovitz, the latter already an enfant terrible of new British poetry after his Children of Albion event at the Albert Hall in 1965. This was soon followed by numbers that included work by Paul Muldoon, Paul Durcan and Barry MacSweeney, all still in their early twenties; other writers at the start of their careers were Seamus Heaney, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Peter Fallon (still a teenager) and Michael Hartnett; the Scottish poets Stewart Conn, Tom Leonard and Alan Bold; from Wales Meic Stephens, Gillian Clarke and Ruth Bidgood. To these we must add those already established – although in his verbal expostulations, Eddie himself could be fiercely partisan, the names I cite here are chosen to give a sense of the huge range of poets, poetic styles and affiliations that Eddie published, and this over several poetic generations: Elizabeth Jennings, Fred Grubb, John Montague, Norman Nicholson, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Kit Wright, Brian Patten, R.S. Thomas, Norman MacCaig, Ted Hughes, Maureen Duffy and Helen Dunmore. It’s an astonishing and far from exhaustive roster.

In latter years Eddie used guest editors with special issues devoted to Canadian, Australian and women’s writing, in addition to celebratory numbers for John Heath-Stubbs, George Barker, W.S. Graham and Roy Fuller. He became a stalwart, and outspoken, member of the general council of the Poetry Society, being especially active in promoting the move of the organization from Earl’s Court to Covent Garden, a move that was not without controversy but which ensured the long-term survival and health of the Society today.

Personally, Eddie was a loyal and generous friend who promoted other writers’ talents selflessly: yes, he could be infuriating and embarrassing at times, but he worked tirelessly for the good of poetry in Britain for nearly fifty years. We are all the poorer for his going.