History

From epics to lyrics, Rowan Ricardo Phillips considers poetry’s reckoning with history and how writing will reflect our current crisis for future generations.

The writer on using Chaucer’s Middle English to channel transgressive figures, rethink gender, and experience the pleasures of language.

The Man Booker finalist on telling a story from the perspective of a spirit and writing to expose historical truths.

On Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them, a witty and subversive novel about life in a fourteenth century convent.

The poet on her reimagined version of Vyasa’s Mahabharata and the human cost of war.

The unraveling and retelling of history.

The poet on her new collection and how a person lost to history can survive in the imaginary possibilities of art.

Out, like fireflies, from the inter-dimensional, / silver disks at edge of picture hover over Hillary / with swaddled child, John Podesta counterpose beside her, / in a painting I’d like to paint, had I been a painter, / trading in detail from the too-smooth desert

All monuments commemorate the same / falsehood The gilt is genuine and we feel it right / at the surface of our discontent / Anger like so many lustrous mounts softens / in the rain  And stallions and generals must periodically be / re-gilded      recommitted to    as if / as an abiding law of man / Though    if we are honest    it is the law that fails us / along with what we can abide 

The citizen investigator as poet.

The novelist on the enduring AIDS crisis, the resonance of the Lost Generation, and writing her way around questions.

We are street people. Nomadic by nature. We are the grandchildren of poor, adventurous strangers. Our living radicalizes their legacy.

On telling a story within a story, writing about autocratic regimes, and finding creative inspiration in science experiments.

Ville Kumpulainen is a photographer living and working in Helsinki, Finland. In his new book, Out of Sight (Hatje Cantz, 2017), Kumpulainen manipulates archival images to solidify the tenuous connection between present and past, attempting to fill the gaps left between himself and his history.

The Argentine filmmaker on colonialism, recreating history, and Zama.

A film investigating memory and history, premiering exclusively on BOMB, with a brief interview by Alex Zafiris.

From Super PAC to supernova, two artists view photographs through the lens of time, and time through the lens of colonialism.

Broken, the madrilenial butterfly finally suckles / from the dime blood at the ankle of the tube sock.

500 billion years ago—the dark touches itself in the dark and experiences something like ecstasy. Except that ecstasy isn’t a feeling yet—the sensation is just kind of sharp and warm. Afterwards, the dark feels happy and breathless. Afterwards, the dark feels lonely.

The playwright discusses his formative years, rejuvenation of historical material, and how race is coded into theatergoing itself.