Leonard Cohen had integrity, lived by the words he spoke, says award-winning Calgary poet

An award-winning spoken word poet from Calgary is fondly remembering Leonard Cohen for his sense of grace, humour, balance and curiosity.

Cohen, a legendary musician and poet, died Monday at the age of 82.

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Sheri-D Wilson, also known as The Mama of Dada, says Cohen's work got into her consciousness at an early age.

"I remember the first time I heard Suzanne on the radio and I was listening and I went, 'What is that? That is something I haven't heard before,'" Wilson told Daybreak Alberta in a telephone interview from Las Vegas this week.

"It didn't seem like any other song that I had heard. I of course went out right after that and found books by him and then searched him out for the rest of my life."

She says her fondness for the man and his body of work is grounded in his integrity.

"My attraction is his continual desire or concern to find that perfect state of balance that he would probably refer to as a state of grace. That state of grace always sticks with me because if we could, as a community, as a larger society, if we could aim for that state of grace it might bring us to better places of understanding and balance," Wilson explained.

"He had an incredible integrity. He lived by the words that he spoke."

Cohen just had a combination of qualities that made him likeable, Wilson said.

"It is this state of grace and this humour and this balance and this desire to explore sensuality, sexuality and spirituality all at the same time, in this seamless vision through poetry that I adore."

Wilson says she would have enjoyed getting to know Cohen more, but on her terms.

"I never wanted to date Leonard Cohen, you never want to date a womanizer if you are a woman, but I would have loved to have hung out with him in a caf and had a single malt scotch and talked about his desires," she said.

"He was so many things."

Leonard Cohen recites In Flanders Fields

8 years ago

Duration 1:12

The iconic Canadian singer, songwriter, painter and poet died Nov. 7, 2016 at the age of 82

With files from Daybreak Alberta