Diane Burns

Born 1956 in Lawrence, USA
Died 2006 in New York City, USA
Anishinaabe, Chemehuevi

Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney

Alphabet City Serenade, 1988
single channel digital video duration 1:57 minutes

Courtesy Bob Holman, Poetry Spots (poetryspots.com); Video © Bob Holman, Poetry Spots. Text © Diane Burns Estate.

Chemehuevi and Anishinaabe poet Diane Burns walks the streets of New York’s Lower East Side (Loisaida colloquially) reciting her poem Alphabet City Serenade in this powerful footage.

An indictment of the gentrification of Loisaida and the treatment of First Nations Americans, Alphabet City Serenade paints the cracked windows and littered streets of Loisaida with a vivid and loving brush. The serenade also threads Burns into the fabric of the cityscape, with its crumbling tenements and narrow stretches of blue sky.

A prolific personality and artist, Burns read her work at Bowery Poetry Club, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church as well as joining the likes of writers Allen Ginsberg, Joy Harjo, and Pedro Pietri in Nicaragua for the Ruben Dario Poetry Festival.

Yet by the late 1980s, Loisaida, a counter-culture hub for creative, immigrant, and queer circles, was at risk of losing itself to rising rents, drugs, and the HIV epidemic. Before long, the community which had sustained Burns would dissipate, coming together again in 2006 on the event of her death. Over a career defined by an immutable spirit Alphabet City Serenade captures the writer’s sardonic, yet penetrating, insight:

Hey man, can you spare a cigarette?

Do you know of a place to sublet?

Do you know where I can cash this check?

Do you know, do you know that

I hate Doris Day

I hate Chevrolet

I hate Norman Bates

And I hate the United States

Diane Burns (1956 – 2006) was an Anishinaabe and Chemehuevi artist and poet. She attended Barnard University and in the 1980s became a member of the Lower East Side poetry community, reading her work at the Bowery Poetry Club, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. She was invited by the Sandinista government to visit Nicaragua for the Ruben Dario Poetry Festival, along with Allen Ginsberg, Joy Harjo, and Pedro Pietri. Known for her direct, wry poems, Burns engages themes of Native American identity and stereotypes.

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