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

Episode 018 – Samantha Willman | MAKE // BREAKSamantha Willman is a Canadian writer, designer, and editor based in Montréal. She co-founded and co-edits Romanticon, a Substack literary magazine dedicated to neo-romanticism and new sincerity, alongside Anthony Galluzzo, Paul Franz, and Matthew Gasda. She also publishes Marbl, a personal newsletter exploring intimacy, symbolism, and the interior life. Her 2016 book Behind The First One was published through the Canadian Academy in Rome. In this episode of MAKE // BREAK, 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.Looking for this kind of insight and care for your own work? THE V1LLAG3 is the room where you show the work. ↓ link at the bottom.👀 What you'll hearWhy writing poetry in Rome unlocked a felt sense of truth she couldn't access through logic aloneHow the new sincerity movement pushes back against layers of ironic artifice in online cultureBuilding a 60-person poetry reading community from scratch with zero formal planThe case for keeping a day job so you can approach your art from love instead of desperationHow Rilke wrote two masterworks in weeks and what that says about creative production vs. productivityWhy philosophia means love of truth — and why that changes everything about how artists create🕰️ Chapters00:00 Introduction and how Lance discovered Samantha03:00 Why poetry is hard to recommend and harder to consume05:16 Writing poetry in Rome and the birth of creative instinct08:59 Charles Taylor, intrinsic rightness, and felt truth10:33 Favourite poets: Plath, Octavio Paz, Wallace Stevens14:17 Neo-romanticism and new sincerity explained19:17 Irony culture, meme politics, and the Vice magazine pipeline22:41 Argumentation vs. dialogue — methods of thinking30:00 Building Romanticon's live reading community37:34 Why the Enlightenment was top-down and Romanticism is not42:22 The starving artist myth and creating from a place of health45:16 Rilke, the Sonnets to Orpheus, and creative production in bursts🔗 Guest Linkshttps://romanticon.substack.comhttps://marbl.substack.comhttps://instagram.com/sam.willmanhttps://x.com/samanthawillman🔗 MAKE // BREAK & Host Linkshttps://open.spotify.com/show/5GDOUd909p7ir2W74M9teg?si=cbc7e01e13ba4a20https://instagram.com/lowkeyhellishhttps://tiktok.com/@lowkeyhellish🏘️ THE V1LLAG3 // the paid community from your hostThe room I built because I couldn’t find it; the first honest take your work has been waiting for. Wed Live 90min with Lance & Chris. 7 frameworks V13 uses with $1,500–$3,000/mo retainer clients. Bio, EPK, profile & website teardowns.Founding 50: $49/mo locked for life · 38 spots left. $79 Standard after. Full refund if your 4th Wednesday hasn't earned it.→ https://www.skool.com/v13-7161🔗 V13 Media Linkshttps://v13.netSubscribe and tell us in the comments: do you think sincerity is the real counterculture right now?[Contains occasional explicit language.]#MakeBreak #SamanthaWillman #NewSincerity