Atticus, the masked poet of Instagram, talks identity.
Saturday afternoon, a hundred or so teenage girls assembled at the Outreach Center of West Houston, poetry books in hand, to wait for the man in the mask. The Instagram poet Atticus, whose real identity is not known due to the Guy Fawkes mask he wears during all public appearances, was to appear that day to give a reading of his second book of published poetry, “The Dark Between the Stars,” a title dedicated to all the forgotten women of the world who remind us, with their dark complexity, to appreciate the light.
Atticus, who appears to be a blond American man in his late 20s, has 830,000 followers on Instagram. There is no poetic way to contextualize this fact. You’ve probably never heard of him, yet he’s one of the few poets in the country who can fill up a bookstore in nearly any major metropolitan city. His book tour includes stops in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Toronto and Tempe, Ariz. The Daily Mail once described him as the “Banksy of poetry,” noting that his followers include actress Emma Roberts and model Karlie Kloss.
But when he appeared onstage Saturday, in a community center at an event hosted by the Blue Willow Bookshop, the reception wasn’t that of a Justin Bieber concert. The audience, about 80 percent women under the age of 25, was too lost in thought — or maybe lost in his eyes, which could be barely seen through the tiny slits of his mask — to go nuts. There was silence as he flipped the pages of his book. There was silence when he asked if anyone had questions and no one immediately raised their hand.
This is a conundrum of social-media fame. The delivery and consumption of Instagram poetry is the opposite of spoken word. Like an Instagram follower count, its impact is soundless, existing either on the phone or within a person’s internal monologue — though, nowadays, the two are becoming hard to tell apart. Atticus was not forged on the road, nor was his notoriety. And his delivery wasn’t that of a showman, but of a shy, awkward, overgrown teenager, albeit one sporting the wisdom and empathy of a thousand grandmothers.
“I love Texas. But it’s so hot in here,” was the first thing he said, his body the shape of a comma as he sat on the stool on the stage. “Do you mind if I take off my mask?”
What followed was the first and only nod to vaudeville that afternoon: He took off his mask, only to reveal an identical mask underneath, which pulled and pull some light chuckles from the crowd. He wore a black hoodie and spoke by slightly lifting up his mask and inserting the microphone underneath. He spoke in a low, unhurried voice, punctuated by the kind of casual umm’s and ahh’s that suggested this wasn’t a show — this was a private hangout.
“What inspires you?” one woman asked after a light dose of poetry.
“Life. Just living,” he said. “And my imagination.”
“As you get more famous, are you ever tempted to take off the mask?” a man asked.
“The more notoriety, the more I want to keep the mask,” he said.
In between poems, he spoke of skinny dipping, drinking rosé in Paris and riding his motorbike. At times my cynicism was tested, especially during poems that felt fine-tuned for virality. “The plane shook/ and it scared her/ not because she/ was scared to fall/ but because she cared/ so little/ if she did,” was one of them. The other I saw in his book, which read, “WORDS WILL SCRATCH MORE HEARTS THAN SWORDS.” And another: “The bravest thing she ever did was to stay alive each day.”
Atticus’ appeal is clear. He is inside your head, massaging each of your insecurities, reminding you of your hidden beauty, which only he can see. “Brushing a girl’s hair behind her ear once a day will solve more problems than all those therapists and drugs,” one of his poems goes. The audience was stricken. One fan had his poem, “Love her but leave her wild,” tattooed down her spine. One asked if he liked girls who drank whiskey (“Yes. They tell good stories.”) because, you know, she drank whiskey. Another asked if he could “describe the color of your eyes the way you would a poem.” “They’re blue,” he responded. “Can you write a poem about my eyes?”
That a fan would cling to his tiniest physical details suggested that his mask serves as both thesis and antithesis to being an Instagram poet. It creates a paradox of celebrity, in which mystique and anonymity drives fame, yet prevents the kind of intimacy that social media makes us crave. Atticus was asked if he still wears the mask when he’s not performing. He said no.
“When you take off the mask, it’s its own mask. Because no one knows who you are,” he said.
He was asked why he chose that design for the mask, which was popularized by the film “V for Vendetta,” and has been appropriated by the hacker group Anonymous. He had an excellent answer, which he admitted wasn’t his own observation.
“It’s reflective,” he said, betraying just the slightest hint of irony in his voice. “So people can see themselves in you.”