Rom Com

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At precisely the cultural moment you were hoping for, a dream team of smart, sexy, brunette, West Coast poets of Italian descent has passionately co-authored an intelligent collection of poetry that both celebrates and capsizes the romantic comedy.

From the origin of the genre (It Happened One Night) to its contemporary expressions (Love Actually), the poems in Rom Com trace the attempt to deconstruct as well as engage in dialogue with romantic comedy films and the pop culture, celebrities, and tropes that have come to be associated with them. These irreverent, playful, weird, and comedic poems come in a variety of forms, fully engaging in pop culture, without a judgmental tone. They see your frumpy expectations and raise you issues of sexuality, consent, sexism, homophobia, race, and class. They explore the highs and lows of romantic relationships and the expectations and realities of love, tackling real emotional worlds through the lens of film.

Two cool people wrote it. Dina Del Bucchia, the fashionable and voluptuous, is a woman on the go, brazenly hosting literary events and tweeting about otters and award shows. Daniel Zomparelli, the handsome and dashing, is a young, gay man-about-Vancouver who somehow also quietly edits (in chief) a semi-annual poetry journal. (Ship them all you want, fools.)

How to tell if you are compatible with this book: Are you equally versed in literature and pop culture? Are you a film-savvy fan of contemporary poetry? Are you an academic with interest in literature and cultural studies? Are you in general a cool, sad person? This book might just be the sassy best friend you’ve wanted.

AUTHOR

Dina Del Bucchia

Dina Del Bucchia is the author of the short-story collection Don’t Tell Me What to Do and of three collections of poetry: Coping with Emotions and Otters, Blind Items, and Rom Com, the latter written with Daniel Zomparelli. She is an editor of Poetry Is Dead magazine, the artistic director of the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, and a co-host of the podcast Can’t Lit with Jen Sookfong Lee. An otter and dress enthusiast, she lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations (Vancouver, British Columbia).

Reviews

“Daniel Zomparelli and Dina Del Bucchia lend coolness to a genre that’s steadfastly anything but in Rom Com. The book mines the conventions of romantic comedy, as well as the content of actual romantic comedies, with the kind of deep sympathy and sense of humour you’re only really able to pull off when you really love the thing you’re making fun of. … all in all it’s an in-depth exploration of a skin-deep genre that’s whip-smart and extremely fun to read.”
—Globe and Mail

“If your relationship with mainstream rom coms remains, like mine, love/hate, on-again/off-again, or just ‘it’s complicated,’ then Rom Com might be a great place to share a laugh and maybe some tears of disappointment in mainstream media representation. I not only felt represented in these poems, but also seen and validated. … Rom Com doesn’t shy away from being critical of mainstream romantic comedies, even as it unabashedly expresses its love for the genre.”
—Daily Xtra

“an in-depth exploration of a skin-deep genre that’s whip-smart and extremely fun to read.”
—Globe and Mail

“Basically awesome. … The poems bounce between poking fun at the absurdity of rom-coms and their clichés, and shovelling ice cream scoops of sadness into their downturned mouths – sometimes all at once. … Maybe more people would like poetry if it was always this smart and fun.”
—Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press

“An enormously smart and witty collection, playing with stereotypes and a love of bad film. And yet, are Del Bucchia and Zomparelli celebrating the genre or pulling away the curtain, and revealing its inherent shallowness? The answer, I think, is, somehow, incredibly, both.”
—rob mclennan’s blog