Friends pay tribute on death of poet Eddie Linden at 88

Eddie Linden, the poet and founder of Aquarius poetry magazine and co-founder of the Simon Community homeless charity, died in a nursing home in Maida Vale, London, on November 19th. He was 88.

Linden’s complex character was encapsulated by an old friend Gerald Mangan in a pen and ink drawing of him arriving at the gate of heaven, accompanied by St Peter who pleads with a bearded, grumpy God the Father seated on his celestial throne. “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?”

Born in Motherwell, Scotland, to an unmarried mother from Coalisland, Co Tyrone, on May 5th, 1935, he was baptised John Edward Glackin but became Edward Linden when he was adopted by relatives Eddie Linden and his wife Mary Glenn. However, after Mary died in 1944 and his father remarried, his new stepmother insisted he should be institutionalised in an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity.

In 1958, Eddie moved to London and the following year helped form the Catholic CND and with Anton Wallich-Clifford, a probation officer at Bow Street Magistrates Court, co-founded the Simon Community, the charity helping homeless people.

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He founded the acclaimed Aquarius magazine in 1969 which he edited from his flat in Maida Vale for more than 35 years until its demise in 2004 after 26 issues, some of which were guest-edited. It featured such distinguished poets as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, George Barker and John Heath-Stubbs, many of whom became friends. It brought an absolute stability into his life, he told John Cooney, who was working on his biography. “People started taking me seriously. And this was what I wanted.”

His life was chronicled in Sebastian Barker’s 1979 book, Who is Eddie Linden, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. It inspired a stage play of the same name, produced in 1995 at The Old Red Lion in Islington, North London. Written by William Tanner, the play starred Michael Deacon as Linden. His first collection, City of Razors, was published in 1980, followed in 2011 by A Thorn in the Flesh.

Rosita Sweetman, the Dublin writer, wrote: “My abiding memory of Eddie Linden is riding a fiercely bucking trawler to Inishbofin, wind lashing the waves into angry mountains, plunging us up and down, freezing horizontal rain and Eddie, beetroot-coloured from the cold and too much whiskey, in a tight, light blue suit, shouting across, the wind grabbing his words from his mouth as they emerged: ‘Will I read ye my ‘pome’?. While I’m wondering how he’s going to read in the midst of this, Eddie has already begun reciting his famous City of Razors:

‘A woman roars from an upper window

‘They’re at it again, Maggie!

Five stitches in our Tommy’s face, Lizzie!

Eddie’s in the Royal wi’ a sword in his stomach

And the razor’s floating in the River Clyde’.

“‘Reading’ over, Eddie gave a characteristic nod of satisfaction. Job done. Glasgow had appeared – a livid living phantom. Then he got sick over the side. He was a true original. Terrifying. Tender. Fierce. Honest. Those blue eyes didn’t so much look at you as look inside you. Rest in much-deserved peace, brother.”

The artist Constance Short, one of Linden’s oldest friends, recalled their friendship.

“Eddie was loyalty itself. His friendship endured for over 50 years, through thick and thin and three house moves. He loved his family Christmas and New Year with me and my family. He lived in a tiny room in London and the hustle and bustle and excitement over Santy delighted him. Though living on very little, he always brought us all presents. He would be up first lighting the fire. Then off to the shops to get the Guardian, to see who had died and at the new year to see if he had made the honours list. He was a great attender of funerals. Eddie organised two exhibitions for me in the Poetry Society Gallery in London. If he could do a good turn for anybody, nothing was too much trouble. I also did the cover of the women’s issue of Aquarius, guest edited by Hilary Davies, who was at Eddie’s bedside till the end.

“We went looking for Eddie’s father, who he discovered was from Crossmaglen, where I am from. (I first met Eddie in the Museum Bar in London with the publisher Tim O’Keefe and it was only years later we discovered our “home” connections.) We found the family and though the possible father was dead the family gave Eddie a great welcome. We drove frosty roads to Coalisland where we did meet his mother’s people, the Glackins – and there again we had a fantastic welcome and a big feed.

“Eddie was a true intellectual interested in politics and literature in particular. Maggie Thatcher drove him mad. He would get on the phone to me, straight into his grievance, shouting. When coming up to his 70th birthday he was complaining that other poets were getting Festschrifts so I set about compiling one for him. I got him to list the people he wanted included. Not one refused the request from the over 300 invited. Seamus Heaney was the first back with a poem for Eddie.”