Stalker Talk

If you really want to wade through 1400 pages of repetitive gossip collected by an envious Toronto Star journalist who never even met Leonard Cohen...and would never have got approval for this project if Leonard were still alive... happy Easter reading!

Profiteering off a dead man, while exploiting the women who knew him best -- and making up the facts when necessary -- that's the formula employed by this arch- Zionist wannabe insider. Leonard's kids do not speak to Michael Posner -- that ought to tell you everything you need to know.

When Michael Posner first contacted me in 2018 or so, two years after Leonard's death, I agreed to be interviewed for his book. Leonard appeared to me in a dream soon after, along with an image of Posner sitting on a fence somewhere: the message seemed to be he was ambivalent or untrustworthy. I should have listened but Posner was persistent and kept sending me questions in emails and pms. We spoke on the phone and had a long face to face meeting in a restaurant on the Main - then I took him on a little tour of the neighborhood where I had lived next door to Leonard from 1983-96. I introduced him to Myokyo of the Centre Zen de la Main -- she wisely refused to be part of his project but we chatted for a while over her back fence.

Posner frequently checked back with me about details, giving the impression he was a stickler for precision. Later he travelled to Hydra and spoke to anyone and everyone who knew Leonard from his time on the island. Since by then both Marianne and Leonard had passed on, his informants boiled down to a handful who had been on the island in 1980-81, the last time Leonard spent any real time there which also happened to be the year I had a Canada Council grant to write my first novel, and lived in rooms on Hydra from late November 1980 to late September 1981. A year to remember-- as I have written elsewhere. It began with John Lennon's  death while Leonard was briefly in Manhattan in early December, although he never mentioned that trip in conversation. However he did display a handgun on the coffee table at his house when I visited - saying he needed it for self defense.

Needless to say, that story never made it into Posner's 1400 page opus. Of the people he interviewed on Hydra, none were ever close friends of Leonard or even had access to him in 1981. That winter, Leonard socialized with a small circle of hard-drinking cronies like George Liallios, Black Maggie, Anthony Kingsmill and a Swiss mercenary named Alexis Bolens who boasted about his fascist connections and kill trophies.

For months Leonard holed up in his house with his children and the nannies, writing the libretto for the rock opera Night Magic. Gone were the days when the poet sat in the port chatting with hippies, artists and permanent residents -- he had become a paranoid recluse in the wake of Lennon's death and often spoke of a dark future which only a few would survive.

One island fixture in 1981 was Donald Lowe who claimed to have special insights into Leonard's spiritual side, having known Marianne Ihlen back in the 60s. Donald is an unbearable blowhard and last I heard had written 100 books none of which were ever published. Leonard avoided him, preferring the company of women...

Donald Lowe is Michael Posner's single source who went on record claiming he witnessed me "stalking" Leonard Cohen "everywhere." For this absurd statement, published in Volume II, the 80-something Donald was apparently rewarded with a special tribute last summer at the Hydra open air cinema -- a moment of glory after decades of diving for octopus and dwelling in his own echo chamber of woman-hating fantasy.

Posner portrays me several times in his book as a relentless " stalker" when in fact I was Leonard's friend and near neighbour in Montreal before I went to Hydra. Despite deep disagreements (Zionism, and other things) we remained on cordial terms over the 20 years we lived in close proximity to each other. In 1996 Leonard described me to Kelley Lynch as an 'ex girlfriend'. I guess I was.

Almost none of what I told Posner appears in his book although he depended on my memory over 20 years for the timeline. Few people he interviewed had more than one or two brief encounters with Cohen. None except Barrie Wexler spent time with him in as many places as I did: Montreal, Hydra, Los Angeles.

Posner's sleazy journalism and lack of ethics are positively shocking but of course nothing shocks me anymore.

Stalking is a criminal offense that involves physical threats and psychological violence. By labeling me a stalker, Posner clearly crosses the line into libel. Nobody ever witnessed me stalking Leonard because it never happened. Why don't I sue Posner? I'm advised I would probably win. Maybe because Posner is such a decrepit, pathetic worm of a man and I have better things to do than focus on the propaganda machine he is a sad little cog in..