Eddie Linden

Eddie Linden had such an unfortunate childhood that it is in danger of overshadowing his work as an editor and poet, although the best examples of his poetry, such as ‘City of Razors’, draw on those early years and sectarian violence in Glasgow. Linden was born John Edward Glackin in Northern Ireland in 1935. As his mother was unmarried, relatives in Scotland took over his care. When his foster mother died, Linden was 9, and his step-father remarried a woman who disliked him enough try and have him put in an assylum. When this didn’t work, he was instead sent to an orphanage. As well as these Dickensian traumas of his youth, Linden struggled – as documented in his verse – with alcohol, his Roman Catholic faith, and his sexuality.

He left Scotland in 1958 to live in London, where he began to forge connections with poets. Linden had been writing verse since he was in his teens, and now he was seriously encouraged by new acquaintances George Barker and Peter Porter. In 1969, he founded Aquarius, an infrequent periodical dedicated to poetry, which he continued to edit throughout his life until 2004. In 1979, he co-wrote with Sebastian Barker his autobiography Who is Eddie Linden?, which was adapted into a stage play the following year. Eddie’s Own Aquarius was published in 2005 to mark Linden’s 70th birthday, and featured contributions from, amongst others, Seamus Heaney, Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, and Elaine Feinstein.