Samantha Willman: Truth, Poetry, and the Love It Demands

<p>Episode 018 – Samantha Willman | MAKE // BREAK</p><p><strong>Samantha Willman</strong> is a Canadian writer, designer, and editor based in Montréal. She co-founded and co-edits <strong>Romanticon</strong>, a Substack literary magazine dedicated to neo-romanticism and new sincerity, alongside <strong>Anthony Galluzzo</strong>, <strong>Paul Franz</strong>, and <strong>Matthew Gasda</strong>. She also publishes <strong>Marbl</strong>, a personal newsletter exploring intimacy, symbolism, and the interior life. Her 2016 book <em><strong>Behind The First One</strong></em> was published through the Canadian Academy in Rome. In this episode of <strong>MAKE // BREAK</strong>, Samantha unpacks why irony culture has hollowed out creative life, how she built a thriving 60-person poetry reading series from nothing, and why approaching truth with love (not optimization) is the real survival strategy for artists.</p><p>🎯 ONE MORE THING // free, weekly, zero fillerV13 runs three newsletters: one for artists building a career on their own terms (Industry Insider), one for writers who refuse to be ignored (Verse &amp; Vision), and one weekly roundup of music, entertainment, culture &amp; literature (V1LLAG3 Voice). Pick your lane, or take all three.→ <a href="https://v13.net/newsletter">https://v13.net/newsletter</a></p><p>👀 What you&#39;ll hear</p><ul><li>Why writing poetry in Rome unlocked a felt sense of truth she couldn&#39;t access through logic alone</li><li>How the new sincerity movement pushes back against layers of ironic artifice in online culture</li><li>Building a 60-person poetry reading community from scratch with zero formal plan</li><li>The case for keeping a day job so you can approach your art from love instead of desperation</li><li>How Rilke wrote two masterworks in weeks and what that says about creative production vs. productivity</li><li>Why philosophia means love of truth — and why that changes everything about how artists create</li></ul><p>🕰️ Chapters</p><p>00:00 Introduction and how Lance discovered Samantha</p><p>03:00 Why poetry is hard to recommend and harder to consume</p><p>05:16 Writing poetry in Rome and the birth of creative instinct</p><p>08:59 Charles Taylor, intrinsic rightness, and felt truth</p><p>10:33 Favourite poets: Plath, Octavio Paz, Wallace Stevens</p><p>14:17 Neo-romanticism and new sincerity explained</p><p>19:17 Irony culture, meme politics, and the Vice magazine pipeline</p><p>22:41 Argumentation vs. dialogue — methods of thinking</p><p>30:00 Building Romanticon&#39;s live reading community</p><p>37:34 Why the Enlightenment was top-down and Romanticism is not</p><p>42:22 The starving artist myth and creating from a place of health</p><p>45:16 Rilke, the Sonnets to Orpheus, and creative production in bursts</p><p>🔗 Guest Links</p><p><a href="https://romanticon.substack.com" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://romanticon.substack.com</a></p><p><a href="https://marbl.substack.com" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://marbl.substack.com</a></p><p><a href="https://instagram.com/sam.willman" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://instagram.com/sam.willman</a></p><p><a href="https://x.com/samanthawillman" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://x.com/samanthawillman</a></p><p>🔗 MAKE // BREAK &amp; Host Links</p><p><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5GDOUd909p7ir2W74M9teg?si=cbc7e01e13ba4a20" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://open.spotify.com/show/5GDOUd909p7ir2W74M9teg?si=cbc7e01e13ba4a20</a></p><p><a href="https://instagram.com/lowkeyhellish" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://instagram.com/lowkeyhellish</a></p><p><a href="https://tiktok.com/@lowkeyhellish" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://tiktok.com/@lowkeyhellish</a></p><p>🔗 V13 Media Links</p><p><a href="https://v13.net" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://v13.net</a></p><p>Subscribe and tell us