Exclusive Interview: Arielle Estoria
To start with your piece “A Prayer for the Church Girl”: can you walk us through the emotional, mental, and spiritual space you were in when it arrived? What felt urgent to say that poetry helped you voice?
I mean, in general, I tend to process and communicate through poetry just because that’s where my brain goes. You know, that’s like the first thing I feel like I latch on to. And this specific poem, “A Prayer for the Church Girl,” I literally was listening to Beyoncé’s “Church Girl” song for the first time through. And I actually—I recorded myself responding to it in the moment, because I was like, Wait, she has a song called “Church Girl” on the album—what is this about to be about? And so I recorded myself dancing to it and then stopping halfway through and actually listening to the lyrics. I kept it on repeat a few times, and I literally wrote “A Prayer for the Church Girl” right in that moment as a response to what I was hearing.
She has a lot of language around, like, she’s not trying to hurt nobody; she’s just trying to dance; she’s just trying to be herself. And as someone who grew up in the church—I’m a pastor’s kid and everything—I felt really connected to it, and I really resonated with the idea of, like, Yeah, I’m just trying to be free. I’m just trying to be me. I’m trying to dance, you know, and chase some booty every once in a while, and just exist without all these chains and things like that. So that’s where that poem came from. It literally was a direct response to Beyoncé—church culture.
How do you see pop culture and poetry working together to engage deeply ingrained cultural narratives?
Sure. Well, I mean, if we really look at music in any capacity, all of it kind of starts as a poem. You know, even if songs are fun and poppy and you think they’re not talking about anything, they most likely are talking about something—and talking about it in a way that grabs audiences so they think they’re just dancing and having a good time, but they’re actually responding to something really impactful.
Because I tend to respond to the world around me through poetry, music is one of those ways I go about doing that. I’m very activated—or triggered, or whatever you want to call it—by music and by listening to music. I can imagine that Beyoncé has a book of poems somewhere that turned into the songs that she has. We know that Tupac did, and Kendrick, for sure, does. And I’m pretty sure SZA journals every morning. I think these are people who are very reflective in their thoughts, and it starts as a writing form and then turns into music. All of that art is cyclical and intertwined; it’s almost inevitable that it comes back to a single, consistent throughline of communication. Yeah.
Do you consider your poetry activism, healing, both—or something else? Where do those intersections live for you?
I think it exists as all of it. I don’t know if I ever go into something necessarily trying to be like, This is a protest or This is activism, but just me expressing as a Black woman in America and using my voice to do so is, in itself, its own form of activism—its own form of protest. Writing about my body and existing as a woman and interlacing femininity and spirituality is an act of healing.
I approach it as: the words need to be shared, and the back end of it—the weight—is going to be whatever it needs to be for that time. I do think artists are meant and called to speak to the world around them. By nature it becomes activism; by nature it becomes healing, because we’re choosing to express who we are, how we show up in the world, and how that affects us and the world around us.
One line that stayed with me: “Returning to our feminine is the closest to God we’ll ever be.” How has expressing your femininity deepened your spirituality?
Yeah. Well, a lot of the spirituality I grew up with was very—one, one-sided, and two, male-driven. So any ideas of divinity were always pointed toward a male. Any ideas of being connected to spirituality always had this very patriarchal landscape to it. A lot of my spiritual undoing really started when I first heard a pastor refer to God and the Spirit as feminine—as “she,” using female pronouns. That completely turned everything upside down for me, because if we believe there’s an image and a reflection of all people and all living things, why would it not correlate both male and female?
For me, doing things to exercise and be in my body—Zumba and yoga—all these things reminded me of my own body and, in return, the connectedness and the spirit I believe exists in there. And if it exists in there, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a male spirit; I don’t know if it’s necessarily a pronoun spirit at all. Tapping into, like, No, I know my body is good, and I know a lot lives here within her—that, in itself, brings me more to the feminine and to a spirituality that’s so much more fluid than the one I was given.
Spoken word asks us to say the honest thing out loud. How does that vulnerability shape your relationship with audiences and community?
I think there’s so much power in not only writing the honest thing, but saying the honest thing out loud—and spoken word is such a vehicle for that. There are many poems I’ve written that were meant to be read. Most of the poems in my book I wrote specifically to be written and read, not necessarily spoken.
When a poem is said out loud, there’s a certain message, urgency, and emotion you’re trying to convey. Every time, there’s a nakedness that comes from it. It’s honest and exposing, so a lot of times it will feel that way. You might feel a little naked after you get off the stage—I do sometimes. But I also know I wouldn’t want to do anything else or express in any other way. I have to be careful with how much I show up in that space, but my favorite thing is: you say the honest thing, the vulnerable thing, and people are like, “Can you get out of my head? How did you know I was feeling that?” That moment of connectedness and relatability with people you might not expect—that’s the best feeling ever.
What would you say to emerging poets facing self-censorship (family, community) or actual institutional censorship?
I’m actually going to read Audre Lorde—she has a quote I use as the intro to my last album:
“What are the words you do not have yet? Or for what do you not have words yet? What do you need to say? List as many things as necessary. What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow, and the day after. If we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language and definition, ask yourself: What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?”
That quote plays in my head all the time. It played in my head when I was writing my album—What are people going to think? What are my parents going to think? When I wrote my book’s first draft and my editor said, “You’re holding back,” I was like, Yeah—because I don’t want everyone to read this and judge me, or think of me this way, or what if I get disowned?
The work is coming to you because it needs to be said. It is not our job to figure out how it’s going to look. Are the words coming to you? Then your job is to put them down and share them. Yes, it’s vulnerable and exposing, but often we’re revealing a truth—an honesty people are too afraid to admit. There’s so much freedom in saying it with your whole chest and allowing yourself to be open and bare, because if you don’t, that will destroy you. You’ll be less whole, less healed if you don’t—and I can’t let fear be the thing that keeps me from being whole and healed. Yeah.
Your poem’s tone feels gently resolute—convicted without closing the door. Was it always that way, or did you explore angrier/quieter versions?
I always tease that I have a really hard time writing an angry poem. It always comes back to a bow—or a rainbow—or some type of hope. I kind of say I’m the queen of silver linings. I always want to find where the light is, even in situations like that.
In “A Prayer for the Church Girl,” there are waves. I also say, like, “trying not to be angry at the ways that they used to keep us in cages; eventually we were made to break.” There’s anger in having to write this poem at all, in having to be in this space. But if I’m going to be in this space, I don’t think it serves us to just sit angry and not have it funnel into something else. If the anger doesn’t turn into action—if I can’t lash it out and then release it—there has to be a funnel. We can’t hold and stay angry just for the sake of it.
Most of my poems are written in one full sweep—I say “spilling” instead of writing. I spill the words; that’s how they show up. There might be some tweaks and edits—especially for that poem, like, Oh, that sounds weird when I recorded it, or that shows up weird on video—and I make edits. But mostly, my poems exist in that setting: how I say it and how it shows up on the page or verbally is just how I was feeling in the moment. I try to sit there and honor that—whether it’s a wave of anger or something else.
On structure: the piece moves almost like a sermon—rhythm, return, revelation. How do you approach structuring a spoken-word piece versus a page poem?
Yeah—again, I don’t have a lot of thought process. I mean, obviously there are thoughts, because I’m writing them down—but the poem’s structure creates itself. I really just put it on the page.
I am a pastor’s kid, so I cannot help but get a little bit “sermon-y” with whatever I approach. I’ve always been that way, and I still hold on to that from my upbringing. I’ll preach for a second—I don’t mind—especially in that poem. What an ironic twist to “sermonette,” something people would say is not a sermon or not valid. I’m like, No—there’s a whole congregation of women who are not free, and this is the thing that will help them be free. So I’m going to preach it for a second.
I look back and I’m like, I don’t know—the poem did that. I can’t take a lot of credit for how that showed up, because that’s how it wanted to be shared and interpreted.
Are there narratives—within or beyond faith/gender/sexuality—you feel called to explore more deeply in spoken word right now?
Um, I don’t know. I feel like so many poems exist—especially in spoken word—and when you add competition, people have gone in on so many layers. That’s the beautiful part about art: we’re not writing a new thing; we’re saying and perceiving it in a way that fits the setting we’re in—the zeitgeist we exist in.
For me, I’m in a season of continuing to say the honest thing out loud. I absolutely worry about how people will see or perceive it. I’m in a play right now, and the content is thick and spicy and fun and outlandish—but I’m like, Oh, my parents cannot come and see this. People who knew me in a church context probably should not come. And if they do and have their thoughts, that’s what it is.
I’m excited for it. At the end of the day, it’s like, Can I be proud of the work, even if it rattles me? Even if it shakes me? With that poem, with the album—always: What would I say if I didn’t have this limiting belief or this one way of perceiving the world? What else would I say—and how daringly would I say it? Yeah.
You work across forms—acting/theater and poetry/spoken word. How do those practices inform each other?
Yeah—poetry kind of came from acting. I went to an arts high school in Oakland. We did academics from 8–12, and our emphasis from 1–4. My emphasis was theater. I was also one of those theater students who wrote a lot, so I kept getting invited to literary arts and poetry workshops because I wrote, too.
Poetry started because I was writing monologues and perspectives: What’s a love poem from the perspective of Coretta Scott King? What would it be to see Martin Luther King Jr. as partner/husband/lover—not just a great man? What does it sound like when Emmett Till’s mother is grieving? Those monologues were poetically written, and that’s how I processed them. That turned into more poetry.
They’re interconnected. My heart is to create—to build a world and a life where I can show up creatively. I put acting aside for a long time because of poetry, and now I’m making my way back (commercially or on stage), and it’s fun. Who I am as a poet sets who I am as an actor up: I know how to be vulnerable and honest for myself; now I can be vulnerable and honest as this character—as this woman showing up in the world just the same.
Finally, in larger cultural dialogues about faith, freedom, and feminism—especially in spaces that haven’t welcomed these conversations—what role do you envision for yourself?
I think I’ve always sat in those places, like, Why don’t we say these things out loud? How can I say it so people aren’t turned off but drawn in? That’s a lot of why my bachelor’s is in psychology. This is artwork and mind work—being an artist—and I wanted to tap into that.
There’s a lot of fear in those spaces. I wanted to find holes in the fear and poke where something needs to gush or flow. If words can be the caveat for openings, then why not?
I don’t know if I consciously try to do those things. That’s who I am and how I show up. I can’t help but put that out, whether I want to or not. There are times I’m like, I don’t want to say that. I’d rather not write that poem. But the due diligence and responsibility is that we show up to it and don’t let fear get in the way.
I will always be a mouthpiece where I can—speak to hope where I can, find the light where I can, call things out where I can—and do it in a way that is sustainable and loving, that pushes us toward being whole and healed, each of us.
