American and Indigenous Studies Program Presents

A Reading and Conversation with Nicole Wallace on Diane Burns and Lineages of Anishinaabe Poetics

A reading and conversation with Nicole Wallace on Diane Burns and Lineages of Anishinaabe Poetics.

AS 222, Indigenous Feminisms, Tuesday November 22
1:30pm, Weis Cinema, Bard College

Diane Burns, Riding the One Eyed Ford: https://digitalcollections.poetshouse.org/digital-collection/chapbook-collection/riding-the-one-eyed-ford

Nicole Wallace’s first chapbook, WAASAMOWIN, was published by IMP in 2019. Most recently, Nicole was the June/July 2020 poetry micro-resident at Running Dog and a 2019 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow. Recent work can be read in print in Survivance: Indigenous Poesis Vol. IV Zine and online at Running Dog, A Perfect Vacuum, and LitHub. They have also contributed to programs and publications celebrating the work and life of the late poet, Diane Burns, author of Riding the One-Eyed Ford (Contact II, 1981).

Through their ongoing participation in language classes and through their work as a writer and poet, Nicole is dedicated to reconnecting with and carrying forward the Ojibwe language (Ojibwemowin / Anishinaabemowin). They have participated in remote language classes with Dr. Wendy Makoons Geniusz through UW-Eau Claire, and most recently with Memegwesi Sutherland through the Minneapolis American Indian Center/Culture Language And Arts Network.

Nicole received a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study (2008) and a Masters of Library Science in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Materials from Queens College, CUNY (2012). They have lived and made work as a guest on occupied Canarsee and Lenape territory (NYC) since 2005 and are currently the Managing Director of The Poetry Project. Nicole is of mixed settler/European ancestry and is a patrilineal descendent of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe).

On Diane Burns' Legacy:

Diane Burns (1957–2006) was born in Lawrence, Kansas to a Chemehuevi father and an Anishinabe mother. She moved to New York in the 1970s to attend Barnard College, and after dropping out her senior year, she became active in the poetry scene of the Lower East Side, where she lived. She was a founding poet of the Nuyorican Poets Café, a frequent performer at the Bowery Poetry Club and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, and published a book of poems entitled Riding the One-Eyed Ford (1981), illustrated with her pen and ink drawings.  Along with Allen Ginsberg, Joy Harjo, and Pedro Pietri, she was invited by the Sandinista government to visit Nicaragua for the Ruben Dario Poetry Festival.
In her direct, wry poems, Burns engages themes of Native American identity and stereotypes. She published a single volume of poems during her life, Riding the One-Eyed Ford (1981). She lived in New York City until her death at the age of 49 from liver and kidney failure. On the occasion of Diane Burns’s inclusion in Moma' PS1's Greater New York exhibit, poet Nicole Wallace organized a day of reflection on Burns’s work and legacy featuring Lou Cornum, Sky Hopinka, Maria Hupfield and Justin Mejias.

This conversation is part of the American and Indigenous Studies Course, Indigenous Feminist Critiques and Geographies, and is sponsored by the Mellon Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Initiative.

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For more information, call 347-300-5648, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 1:30 pm – 2:50 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Campus Center, Weis Cinema

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