Alan Bold, poet and critic; born April 20, 1943, died March 19, 1998

WITH the sudden death of Alan Bold, Scotland has lost a great writer; indeed, in my view, the most important poet of his generation. What a tragedy, he was only 54 years old and still had so much art in his soul waiting for poetic expression.

Our thoughts go out to his beloved wife, Alice, and his daughter, Valentina, of whom he was so proud. It seems like yesterday that I attended his wedding - in 1964, when the cream of the Scottish art world, from MacDiarmid, McCaig, and most of the younger generation of Scottish talent gave the couple a memorable send-off on their odyssey. Now that young optimist is dead.

I first met Alan in 1960 through Sandy Moffat and we immediately became firm friends, indeed kindred spirits, and for almost four decades ''The Big Three'', as we modestly called ourselves, have remained close friends.

Alan was a student at Edinburgh University, while Sandy Moffat and I were somewhat rebellious students at Edinburgh College of Art. Our two main meeting places were Milnes Bar in Rose Street and Alan's mother's flat in Gayfield Square where, with the help of much thirst-quenching Highland nectar, we discovered the great literature and music of the world. The foundation of our formative years was firmly established and our creative flow began.

Alan's creative flow at that time was like a river in full spate with poems, essays, and his polemical magazine Rocket pouring out his philosophy and argument of erudition and challenge. He was taking on the world with all the vigour and courage of the young Dante or the young James Joyce in Dublin.

He believed in heroes and they were many and varied, but they had one thing in common - they were all superlative talents. There was no room for mediocrity in Alan Bold's vocabulary. His fearless intensity continued as editor of the Edinburgh University magazine Gambit, then came his first book of poetry - To Find the New. This received great critical acclaim throughout Britain and Alan was on his way.

Volumes of poetry followed one another. He had the honour of being selected as editor of The Cambridge Book of English Verse 1939-78. His master work, his mammoth biography of his hero Hugh MacDiarmid, will live on with the rest of his impressive output as a testament to his own vitality and to his belief in the power of the creative spirit.

I had the privilege of producing with him four portfolios of etchings accompanying his poems - A Celtic Quintet, Haven, Homage to MacDiarmid, and A Celtic Albatross. They are now in major museums and collections throughout the world.

He was always a great lover of the visual arts and pulled off a great feat by persuading the then director of the National Gallery, Colin Thompson, to permit him to use Titian's Diana and Acteon as the front cover of Gambit. He wrote numerous pieces of art criticism and occasionally he would write catalogue introductions for friends' exhibitions. In one of these introductions for an exhibition I was having in London in the early seventies, he included a long poem, The Voyage of John Bellany. I believe this to be probably the most astute piece of work that anybody has ever written about my painting.

Now, Alan Bold the man. He was the greatest fun to be with. His alacrity of wit, his infectious laughter, his talent as a mimic, his total lack of pomposity yet his acute and profound observations of life, people, and the state of the nation. He was the master of the anecdote. He was never a bitter man, indeed he was mostly self-effacing apart from the occasional Boldian tirade directed at a usually well-deserved target.

He will be missed by so many friends, especially Arthur Sharpe, the blues singer Tam White, and his old teacher, the composer Ronald Stevenson, who set him on the right course from his schooldays at Broughton School.

Alan spent the last 20 years of his life in a country idyll in a cottage in the woods outside Markinch. There he worked at his word processor and between times spent happy hours with his neighbours, Johnny Bett, the actor and his wife, also Douglas Eadie the film-maker, an old friend from his university days. He would make the occasional, memorable, and often infamous visit to the capital city where he would peruse the the scene with a few thirsty cronies and return to Markinch with Alice in the car after a Robert Burns day in Edinburgh.

Alan was one of Scotland's foremost literary critics and was literary critic for both the Scotsman and The Herald over a period of many years.

Alan, I can still hear your laughter ringing out loud and clear, and shall for the rest of my life. Alan, I can still hear, tearing at my heartstrings, the resounding words of the poem you wrote as your mother lay on her death bed.

n Alan Bold's widow, Alice, has asked us to intimate that the funeral will be private.