Edwin Morgan appreciation: 'Now he's gone. Scotland is a poorer place … And not just Scotland'

When you arrived to visit, "the professor" was always there for you, and the staff smiled at the mention of his name - as they did last month when I paid what was to be my last visit.

He was looking out as ever on Crow Road, a bundle of books and papers always in front of him, though he had lost much of the ability to write. He couldn't handle a computer. But he could read voraciously.

Balancing The Collected Poems of Edwin Morgan in the hand, it's hard to know where to start talking about Edwin - is it the knowledge how much more he wrote? How much more he gave to audiences all over Scotland and beyond in readings and lectures and discussions? How much more his poetry has meant to people of every age group who sat down and found, here, a poetry that they could talk about and relate to?

His death has taken away not only a successful university teacher and man of letters, a civic presence in Glasgow and a national presence in Scotland. He was immensely well-read, a polymath and someone who worked hard at translating and wrote about translation with fluency and bite. He was an involved poet who did not shy away from topics - abortion in the Stobhill sequence, or indeed discussing his own sexual orientation - which could have been more comfortably avoided.

He wrote about Glasgow with gusto, its peoples, sounds, voices, but he also wrote about Caledonia with the same restless zest for the unusual, the ear-enhancing, the eye-catching.

Cruelly imprisoned by cancer, Eddie steadfastly refused to give in to self-pity or pessimism. Only a week or two ago, he was still witty, even cheerful. He was still seeing a world far beyond the window he sat in front of.

When I left he was settling to his lunch, and an afternoon's reading. Now he's gone. Scotland is a poorer place. And not just Scotland.

• Ian Campbell is Professor Emeritus of Scottish and Victorian literature at Edinburgh University.