Fox and the noun: Costumed Durham poet brings people together while honing craft

When Chris Vitiello inherited a fox costume from a friend who was planning to trash it, he was able to turn a joke gift into a running gag.

Vitiello's work as "The Poetry Fox" has become a successful enterprise and fostered a part of him that was always somewhere inside.

For 11 years, Vitiello has written profound, meaningful poems on his typewriter while dressed up as a wild animal. It’s not what most children dream of becoming as adults, but it’s an integral part of his life and a way to connect with others, turning the often indiviualist act of writing inside-out.

Is it a calling? Sure.

“I didn’t know that this was what I was supposed to be doing when I first started it, but it really has become a centrally organizing aspect of my life, and I couldn’t be happier about that,” Vitiello said.

He has a full-time job with N.C. State University Libraries, but says he's become known for The Poetry Fox.

How does it work? Interested onlookers approach the fox at various events around the Triangle, Vitiello asks for a word, and then he crafts a custom poem from that start.

“Generally, people see it and they get curious and they smile and they wonder what the heck is going on," Vitiello said. "So they want to come over and see it, kind of no matter who they are.”

The Poetry Fox is a long-time project for Vitiello that’s evolved into something he takes to corporate events, farmers’ markets, wedding receptions and even burlesque shows.

The act couples his love for poetry with a fondness for obsolete technology. It’s another chapter in a career he describes as a scatterplot without a defined trajectory.

“I was the kid who ran the film projector in elementary school,” said Vitiello, who works as a freelance writer, author and poet. “[I] always had a typewriter or two around for a lot of years. They’re pretty great for writing poetry.”

Vitiello’s schtick acts as sort of a mascot for a pocket of Durham’s ethos full of kitsch, whimsy and quirk. He calls his Poetry Fox sessions ‘performances’ in a call back to the days of when entertainment consisted of putting a coin in a nickelodeon.

“It changes a person’s expectation of what’s going to happen,” Vitiello said. “They think 'this is going to be a fun, little weird thing. I’m going to get a poem from a guy in a fox suit.' Then suddenly, I’ve written them a poem that’s meaningful to them and we have an emotional experience together.”

It all blossomed out of an artists’ collective in Durham. The act fits contemporary Durham pretty well.

“It was at a time when we used to do weird things on a Friday night, and I figured I’ll just pull the typewriter out and put the fox costume on and write poems, what the heck.”

“At some point, people started saying ‘hey, we’re doing a gallery opening, do you want to do the fox poem thing at that? Before I knew it, I was the Poetry Fox. It really took a good number of years for me to kind of think entrepreneurially about it.”

Serendipity was a popular word he got a lot up until the COVID pandemic, when words like resilience and hope became more common. Home, family, peace and safety are other themes. Music and nature are frequent requests. Vitiello said the job is a reminder of the common ground we all share.

“There’s nobody who doesn’t like the moon,” Vitiello said. “It’s been a little reassuring about the kinds of universally human things that I get to connect to through the Poetry Fox.”

Vitiello said he hears back from people regularly about how they appreciated the poem he wrote for them. Even though he’s pretty efficient in his workflow, Vitiello insists there’s no formula for what he does. Banging out a poem from one word and a making a quick read on a person is challenging, even for an accomplished poet with an MFA.

It’s hard to be understated or sly when you’re typing on a typewriter while dressed in a fox costume, but the silliness of it helps forge relationships, some of which last years.

The initial bizarreness or hilarity of writing a poem on-demand for someone in a fox costume is lost in the creative process. Once he gets a word, Vitiello puts his head down and focuses on the task at hand.

“I don’t think there’s lot of time or room for self-consciousness,” he said. “It’s kind of just get an idea and go. I'm not thinking of the oddity of what the other person's experiencing. There's a kind of obliviousness that I get to experience.”

Vitiello's written more than 31,000 poems for people as The Poetry Fox. Personal style isn’t as much of a priority as much as writing something for the person in front of him. Writing can be isolating, but being The Poetry Fox is liberating, Vitiello says, because he is producing a product for the customer in mind.

“People don’t have the sort of language to fully process all the stuff that they’re having to feel. Sometimes, a poem can help get in there and get something to focus on.”

You can learn more about The Poetry Fox at his website or on Instagram (@thepoetryfox).