Biz Bond

Words by Susan O'Flynn

Photography by Alice Kanako

Interview with spoken word artist Biz Bond - “People give you gold-dust, man!”

Biz Bond first started sharing their poetry in a closed, intimate setting. Equipped with a pastry and a hot drink, they would sit with a mutual friend in a park in Sheffield, doing writing exercises and testing out new material.

When they moved to Manchester, this audience suddenly grew larger. They had been attending the Young Identity workshops at HOME Cinema for a few weeks. At a live gig, another friend had thoughtfully scribbled their name onto an open mic callout sheet while they were in the bathroom. Upon hearing their name announced, the friend gave them a knowing nudge: “I know you’ve got poems on your phone, off you go.”

As a child, they were surrounded by storytellers: “my dad's mum was a great storyteller. I remember she would make games based on old poems. We did a treasure hunt once based on the owl and the pussycat. We had to collect the poem verses, which were also with sweets.” They had parents who would encourage them to put to paper the winding narratives they would reel off at the dinner table, and musical siblings who they would bounce rhythms and verses off. The communal element to it seems, then, to have always come naturally to them.

In the years since, they have developed a persona characterised by piercing analytical insight and an aptitude for sneaking data modelling concepts into lulling rhythms. In one poem, they summarise the routine tracking of our daily habits by large data companies as the: “data lake you left in your wake”. In another, they trace sixties marketing strategies to the present day ritualistic experience of rolling a cigarette.

From those first stories scribbled in notebooks, to the first “shit yourself” public performance, to now, they have built an even bigger circle: “The energy up here is very collaborative, very community orientated. I went to one night and was given a handwritten list of all the other nights I should attend… people remember your name and they look out for you.”

They now host the Manchester branch of the ‘Poet’s Palace’ nights. Founded initially by Casey Arturo in London, he has established chapters throughout the UK. They are community driven events, bringing together newer and more established poets over two halves of an evening. All these performances are accompanied by live music, which “adds a new dimension to the poem, because you’re using your ears”. The audience vote for their favourite newcomer from the first half, who is then invited back as a paid featured artist to the next event.

Arturo offered Biz the gig after encountering them at a slam night: “We had a right good natter; his nan occasionally chiming in; and at the end of the call he said ‘do you want to host it?’” It was a move that they say, “epitomises the poet community.”

Elements of this ‘see what happens’ ethos are present throughout Biz’s other work. They have experimented with various radio show formats across Manchester radio stations. On ‘Bizliothèque’ on Steam radio they will read their own poems out on air, have poets reading their work, or play recordings from Poet’s Palace, along with an “if you’re enjoying this” section. On CROP they host ‘Tea and Bizcuits’, which are on air “love letters in the form of radio shows” devoted to friends.

A few months ago they were having a cigarette outside a bar and overheard “three old biddies holding each other up in the wind, entering” it. One spotted their jumper and whispered to her friends, “that’s a cracking jumper”, and the next whispered back, “oh yeah, I might nick that”.

It’s a scene you can imagine followed by a: “look on my face and my friends will say ‘Oh, you’re writing that down’” - the sign a “seed has been planted” in their mind.

These characterful expressions of human connection fuel Biz’s creative outlook. And it is a refreshing way of seeing through the eyes of a person whose “way of being does not have me with my phone out.”

With this synergy between the data analyst and the playful poet, you would struggle to find a more appropriate observer of the quirks of modern life. Or, at least, not one who has a “bizm” on hand to capture it.