Arianna Astuni

Poets & Storytellers Open Interview Date: 2025/05/09 


“Everything that gets written is like a minute in time. It’s pretty much the way I think, the way I live my life, the way I communicate.” 
- Arianna Astuni 

Gregg Yupanki Bautista: I feel like just from watching you perform, I learn a lot about not only writing or performing, but about life in general. I think that’s such a beautiful thing about your performances. I’ve spoken with you before about how I lost my mother earlier this year, and that was a really transformative experience for me in learning how to write about that. In your poetry and how you’re talking about this new collection, with all the things that you went through, you essentially had to learn to unapologetically love yourself and give up what it means to be “going through time” so that you can move past these traumas. You do it in a way that’s effortlessly beautiful, but it’s heavy. I’m curious about how you do that… where do you go? Are you revisiting that trauma, and is that painful for you or is it almost like a therapy for you? A way of moving forward? 

Arianna Astuni: Well it’s certainly therapeutic, but it’s more like therapeutic without me knowing it’s therapeutic. So everything that gets written is like a minute in time. It’s pretty much the way I think, the way I live my life, the way I communicate. So anything that I’ve written would have been like a brain dump, you know what I mean? And then maybe I’m looking back at it a couple weeks later or doing a couple tweaks or something, and when I’m looking back at it, I’m thinking, “Oh shit… that’s what I was feeling?” So then there’s the therapy. 

So it’s kind of like my personal, rather poet, voice or muse is my therapist as well. 

GYB: I know that you do write a lot, and I’ve seen you writing what you’re about to perform. And of course, that’s a muscle you develop over time, so I guess in a sense you have a way to channel those thoughts. 

AA: I do, I have some friends here that I do writing workshops with on Zoom. I’m always writing. Karin and I, we just did a response poem performance, so we’ll send each other a poem and the other responds to it. I’m constantly working the muscle, the spontaneity muscle. I don’t like the long epic kind of journey. (laughs) I mean, maybe one day. 

GYB: Little by little. 

AA: Yeah. 

GYB: So I don’t want to take too much time, because if I were in the audience I’d want to ask Arianna a million questions. I want to give everyone in the audience a chance because there are so many people here to support you. Who’s first? 

AA: Doesn’t have to be about poetry. (laughs) 

Audience member (AM) 1: I’m curious about how much you’re inspired by being private and alone with your work and your process, and how inspired you are around people. You’re spending a lot of time with community for a poet, and some creative people are overstimulated by that and led astray. You don’t seem to be. Could you talk about how you balance it? 

AA: That’s a really good question, because I need both. There are times where I’m at three or four poetry shows a week, like I need to go out and be around people. It’s one of the best ways I like to socialize. A lot of the shows I go to are at bars or at restaurants, so you’re having a drink, and then someone’s reading, so you don’t have to talk the whole time. I find that super cathartic. You know, I’m around poetry, I’m around people, but I don’t have to have these long, deep conversations, but I certainly disappear. I absolutely 1000% cannot be reached by phone—doors are locked. I’m like the most introverted extrovert you’ll ever meet. 

So I do tinker all the time, and I know it’s happening when I get to a show and I have nothing new to read or somebody asks me to feature and I think “Oh god, everyone’s heard those a million times.” So when the material starts repeating… which is not bad, because you have to practice it and you have to go out there and read poems over and over. And then there’s favorite poems people like to hear, and then there’s themes and you’re like “oh, this fits.” You can’t not repeat poems, but when I start to feel like I’m not so excited, then I say “goodbye, alone time.” You know, I’ll do something that gets those juices back. But I’m glad it seems like I’m fueled by community. (laughs) Thank you. 

AM 2: I’m kind of curious about your process. Are you thinking about this, or is it something that hits you like an avalanche? Is it more of a planned “I’m going to sit down and write” kind of thing, or something else? 

AA: Oh yea, that, constantly. I mean my notes on my phone, there are a million one-liners. So sometimes that one line that I wrote while I was driving, or at the grocery store, or talking to someone on the phone will haunt me for a bit. Or something somebody said. If you hang out with me, you’ll feel like the most profound person because I’m always like “let me write that down!” 

But then sometimes you get home and immediately something comes of it. Other times, it sits there for a long time. Sometimes if I’m feeling a little “eh,” my friends will say, “Arianna, go write,” because they know that calms me. I also teach writing and I run workshops, so I’m doing it all the time anyway so I don’t necessarily take the time for myself to do it. I’ll do a writing workshop online if I really can’t get a poem out that week, or that month. I’ll do my workshops and get stuff from that. 

AM 2: So then that leads into the question of, do you have a standard for yourself that “I must write this many poems in some period of time?” 

AA: I would think that I was dead if I didn’t write a poem. If two weeks went by and I hadn’t written a poem, I’d think “what is wrong with me, I’m dying.” 

GYB: “I lost ‘IT!’” 

AA: (laughs) I would be distraught, you know? That’s the boundary. If it didn’t happen, I would make it happen. 

AM 2: So it’s kind of like an eternal flow. 

AA: Yes, yes.

AM 3: You emote a lot when you perform. Does it ever scare you a little bit? 

AA: That I emote?

AM 3: Not just that you emote, just the digging deep. Because it’s clear that you’re digging deep, it just comes out of your mouth. Digging deep, is it scary?

AA: Well I kind of feel like I’m in a safe place. When I was picking poems for tonight, I saw your face, I saw Karin’s face, Breona’s. I pick for my audience. I might be somewhere else and pick a whole different group of poems. So I don’t want to say I fear, but I’m careful about what I put out there, and there are poems that I would not read. From certain parts of my life, I would not put that past out there. So I don’t know if it’s fear as much as it is just curating what you’re ready to have people hear. But I usually have friends that’ll go read at open music nights, they’ll get up and read poetry. I do not, I only read my poetry at poetry shows. So I’m always making sure I’m in a place where it’s landing on safe ears. 

I don’t know if that answers the question…

AM 3: It does, it does. And this is not a question, but I just wanted to say that for me, when I experience art that’s just really beautiful, I forget to breathe. And so when I listen to you, sometimes I remind myself I have to breathe. (laughs) 

AA: Thank you, I appreciate it! I’m already self-critiquing, like “I moved too fast, I didn’t pause,” you know what I mean? So, thank you.

AM 4: I have two quick questions. Number one, why are you so fucking cool?

AA: Wait, let me write that down. (laughs)

AM 4: Number two is, when did you write your first poem? What was it, do you remember? 

AA: Oh probably when I was really little, I do not remember. I’m pretty old. (laughs) I don’t remember, that’s a good question. I’m sure it rhymed, I’m sure it was about a boy, “love sucks,” part Motley Crew. (laughs)

AM 5: Everyone asked the questions I was going to ask-

AA: You were going to ask why am I so cool?! (laughs)

AM 5: Definitely! I’m still going to pry at the last question asked. When did you know you were a poet then? We all wrote a rhyming poem when we were kids. But when did you realize… You said you can’t go two weeks without writing a poem. When did you become A Poet?

AA: I think everybody here writes, no? People keep journals and stuff? So it’s simply this, and this is a lot of what I teach people who want to write—I noticed right away that I wasn’t writing in prose. I wasn’t writing in full sentences with period or comma, I was always putting it down the page. And it would have been before I even would have read that, I don’t know if it was something I read or if someone gave me a poetry book, or if it was the way I thought I wrote outside the conventional rules of writing. 

I think knowing the rules of writing and writing outside of convention is the best thing to do. I mean, just writing outside it like anarchy doesn’t necessarily always have the best outcome, but I think I just broke the rules naturally. I broke the turns of phrase. I think the way I let myself think on the page was outside the way I would have been taught to put the words together to communicate colloquially. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I don’t know if everybody does that. Some people write all their thoughts in complete prose.

AM 5: Alright, still avoiding the question… (laughs)

AA: I can tell you’re not happy with the answer by your shoulders. (laughs) It was the way the words landed on the page! Even if I was like, “oh, that boy at the playground was so cute,” it would be like:

“The boy
In the dark playground
Dripping red paint
Cute”

It always came out weird like that.

AM 6: Do you have a favorite poem? By someone else?

AA: That’s like asking me for a favorite book. I do not have a favorite poem… do I?

AM 4: What about favorite poets?

AA: Most of the poets I read are local poets, and from the scene. I have thousands of poetry books of people that I’ve seen perform from New York to… you know?

AM 7: I really enjoy your body performance. You’re very comfortable in the way your voice comes out so strongly. What would you recommend for someone who’s just starting? I mean I’m a sculptor, so for me to sit up there and talk is petrifying. I want to get to the level where you guys are so comfortable and the energy is there.

AA: It’s just from doing it a lot. You can see the change in someone after they’ve been reading for months and months and months. And then sometimes you take a dip and change styles and you have to get there again. 

I’ve seen everybody here go through all kinds of different styles of reading. But it gets stronger and stronger as you go. And if you’re going to do performance, you’ve just got to go in and practice new stuff. You can’t always bring the best poems because you want everyone to be impressed, you gotta get up and read the new stuff and find the cadence and find what works. I cut out stuff halfway through, because I can feel it’s not working. It’s just practice. 

Munsif’s feature set last month, everything was memorized. I never was one that really felt like I had to memorize my poetry. I would love to have at least one or two that I memorize and that I perform well, that’s also something that people do. 

AM 7: But when you’re performing, where do you tap into? Because it’s very visual that you project from somewhere inside. 

AA: I have no idea. Does anyone know? (laughs) 

AM 8: You use your hand a lot to keep the rhythm.

AM 9: But it also comes from your stomach.

AM 7: Yes! You touch your solar plexus a lot. 

AA: Maybe. I used to kind of just rock a lot. And then someone said “that’s stimming.” So I don’t know. Sometimes I’ll even add a line if I’m looking at people and I don’t think it hit, I will literally add a line. That’s all I care about, that you’re hearing what I’m saying. 

AM 9: I think that’s the biggest key of the performance. 

AA: Yeah, because if someone’s reading it on the page, they have time to sit with it, they have time to underline and go back to it, reread it. When you’re performing it, it’s just got to hit in the right way. 

AM 4: Do you have any favorite poems of your own that you come back to? 

AA: There’s poems that I know the audience likes. I have this one “Orange Cat” I like to perform, I know you guys like that one, there’s “The Weight of Love.” There are certain poems that I know are just going to land well, so it depends on if I need one of those really strong performance nights. Sometimes I go to shows and I’m literally there to practice. I don’t care what happens, I don’t care how I sound. Of course I’ll be like “I suck,” but you know, really I’m there to practice. And other times I’m there to perform and I have a few that I know I can do. 

GYB: I think something that I really like when you do too… people, when they perform, they have to practice eye contact looking over the crowd or through the crowd, but like I was saying before, you are pulling from a well of emotional energy, and when you make eye contact, I feel like you’re actually connecting. And it’s really powerful. 

AA: I am, I always look at certain people a lot.

AM 9: How do you not lose your place?

AA: I do, and then I just make it up. (laughs) There are a lot of lines when I think “ah fuck,” but you can’t tell because you’re listening to how I’m feeling, not necessarily to what I’m reciting. 

GYB: Poetry jazz.

AA: Yeah! Sometimes I used to stumble on it, but now I just keep going and change it. If it’s a really good line, I’ll stick it in later. 

AM 10: Do you have any advice for people who are just starting out to not get so shaky performing? 

AA: Oh, well I would get stoned, get drunk. (laughs) No, no. Everyone’s different. I stayed shaky for a really long time when performing. It’s only recently that I’m not, I think because I’m on the tail end of reading a lot of the same stuff over a long period of time out in the world. I think maybe if I start doing a whole bunch of new ones, maybe the nerves will come back. 

But I don’t know how to not cry when I’m performing. That’s what I’m working on. But I don’t know. There’s so many poets in the room, I don’t know if anyone has advice for how to not be so nervous. I don’t really overthink things.

AM: Breathe.

AM: Take your shoes off. 

AM 8: Feel the ground. In acting, it really comes back to your feet and your spine. You always have your back. 

AA: I think that could be something that you use to add to the intensity of it, I mean don’t be scared to be “perfect,” and don’t be obsessed with the words as much as conveying the words. Don’t be so stuck on them, and then you can let go. And you can make a joke half way through the poem.

AM 11: And these open mic nights are where we hone it. It’s what it’s for.

AA: Yeah, exactly. I like when people laugh half way during one of my poems when I make a joke, it soothes me when I make people laugh, even if it’s a serious poem. 

AM 12: I think the nervousness is just wanting to be heard or felt. While I’m reading, I’m questioning myself “ok, last time you read this you missed this line, and this line has to come out this way…” And then there’s an air of calm. 

I went to an open mic at Flemington DIY and you were there. I walked up to you at the end, and I was like “THANK YOU!” I can’t remember exactly what you read, but it was so… you just glowed.

AA: I feel really lucky, like I can’t tell you how many things I’ve done in my life and how many places I’ve lived and how many experiences… and I just feel so lucky to be reading poetry. And it feels good, it’s like the healthiest addiction I’ve ever had. And I love the people. It’s the most wonderful people, the smartest people. I just feel exceptionally lucky. I’m one of the lucky ones. 

AM 12: That’s the feeling you convey. I feel it wash over me.

AA: I would hope so, it would break my heart if it didn’t. 

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