The Wick Culture - Sophia Thakur. Courtesy of the artist

Monday Muse

Interview Award-winning Poet Sophia Thakur on Poetry, Faith, Music and the Power of Language

Interview

Sophia Thakur

06 April 2026

Interview

Sophia Thakur

06 April 2026

Some people treat Monday like a hurdle. Sophia Thakur, the British award-winning poet and emerging music artist hailed by the BBC as “The Poet of this Generation” and celebrated by Vogue as “one of the most adored poets of our time”, treats it like a ritual. By the time morning turns to afternoon, the native Londoner is exactly where she needs to be: moving between poems, lyrics and fragments, feeling out the shape of a line. For Thakur, Monday is a fresh page, full of possibility. A day for imagination, faith and following language wherever it wants to lead.

It is a fitting rhythm for a writer who has helped bring poetry into spaces once thought beyond its reach. Her live shows have sold out venues including the Royal Albert Hall, The Jazz Cafe and Abbey Road, while her blend of poetry, neo-soul, afrobeat and folk has helped carve out a new place for spoken word within live music. Recognised by Forbes 30 Under 30, Thakur has moved between headline stages such as Glastonbury and collaborations with major brands including Tiffany & Co., Calvin Klein, Nike, BMW, MINI and Google. Her work has travelled far and wide without ever losing the intimacy that makes it land so deeply.

As her practice expands further into music following the release of her debut single ‘My City’ in 2025, Thakur remains drawn to the ideas that have long animated her writing: faith, love, family, hope, healing and the words we reach for when the world feels harder to hold. We caught up with Thakur to talk about the rituals shaping her Mondays, the seasons informing her work, why poetry still is so vital now and the artists helping her imagine what comes next.

THE WICK: What does a typical Monday look like for you?

SOPHIA THAKUR: My Monday begins on Sunday evening. I insist on giving myself a beautiful frame to wake up into. With Monday being so defining in my life, it’s important to set it up the night before. A clean home to wake and journal in. The book open to read my morning chapters, a prayer, a ginger tea. And then it’s 11am.

That probably sounds quite late to most but with the aim of Monday being to write, there’s a slowness I demand of the morning, that creates the afternoon I need. Monday is for exploring new writers, letting them explore my own page. New music, collecting lyrics, lines from books, quotes, short stories. It’s a day spent dancing with words. For as long as I can remember, Monday has been my favourite day of the week. There’s a crispness to it that welcomes imagination, faith, innovation, new poetry. I do what I can to harness this brightness into my own hopeful skies.

TW: Your poetry often explores love, family, identity, vulnerability and healing. Which themes feel most pressing in your work right now?

ST: Seasons. Growing up, my aunties every occasion without fail would find themselves starstruck by how much my brothers and I had grown. Like most people inside a moving car, we hadn’t noticed how quickly it really happens. Until we had our own cousins, nephews and nieces to witness. They’ve been the surest way to witness time. To be an audience to how seasons promise to always, always change. Grow.

I’ve been writing about the bloom a lot lately. The beauty after the tension. The faith it sometimes takes to stay the course. The alchemising of hope into action. The shoulders that drop, the chin that rises, the tongue that strengthens and the people we become at the end of our winters. The spring, our springs have been inspiring me lately.

TW: You’ve taken poetry into so many different spaces, from Glastonbury to the Royal Albert Hall this February, as well as TEDx talks and major brand collaborations. How have you approached growing your practice while holding on to that sense of intimacy in your performances?

ST: I try to find the me in every message. Unilever once asked me to write about climate change, so I wrote about how much a sunset means to me. How many beaches I’ve found peace on and the hikes that have walked my mind into a better place. I wrote about how my life is saved and enriched by nature, to then imagine a life without it. We all have stories and places to pull from, the more often we tell them… the more we realise how similar our feelings are. How similar we all are. It feels like an important time in society to remember this.

TW: Your recent work feels like an exciting expansion of your practice, moving further into music while holding on to the emotional intimacy of your poetry. How has this newer chapter changed the way you tell stories?

ST: On stage you can get away with a 10 minute monologue, less so on a track. It has encouraged precision and deepening the potency of every word choice. I’ve actually found making music more similar to writing a book than anything else. Perhaps there’s something about playback that demands a more acute attention to detail. I care about the stage as a do the page or the track. The care, however, comes in different colours.

TW: Poetry has not always been seen as accessible or culturally central, yet your work has helped shift that perception. Why do you think poetry is resonating so powerfully with audiences right now?

ST: We’re all searching for a way to think about the world around us right now. Trying to read something that appeals to our own moral leanings, or perhaps introduces us to them. Poetry is a bridge, often appearing during times of great division, to connect. To connect us to our beliefs, to each other. To challenge the root of our ethical thinking. To give us language to explain the times, to explain each other, to explain ourselves to each other.

“Poetry is a bridge, often appearing during times of great division, to connect.”

Above From Sophia Thakur’s ‘Look Up’ (2026). Courtesy of the artist

The Wick Culture - From Sophia Thakur's 'Look Up' (2026). Courtesy of the artist

Above From Sophia Thakur’s ‘Look Up’ (2026). Courtesy of the artist

The Wick Culture - From The Wick's Monday Muse Dinner 2026. Photo: Shaun Cox

Above From The Wick’s Monday Muse Dinner 2026. Photo: Shaun Cox

Above Sophia Thakur. Courtesy of the artist

Above From Sophia Thakur’s ‘Look Up’ (2026). Courtesy of the artist

Above From The Wick’s Monday Muse Dinner 2026. Photo: Shaun Cox

Above Sophia Thakur. Courtesy of the artist

TW: There’s a spiritual depth to so much of your writing, whether in its tenderness, hope, or sense of connection. What role do spirituality and faith play in your work and in your life more broadly?

ST: I’ve grown up in awe of the pulpit. The preachers I’ve watched deliver the type of talk that makes an entire church change their life. Do you know what it means to give somebody faith again?

For decades, I have been a witness to the power of the tongue, the stories in the Bible that have taught and challenged and shaped my belief in love, in people, in transformation, in the resurrection of people’s hopes and dreams. Christianity is where I write from, it’s what inspires me to inspire others. So often, the messages make their way to me through prayer. Actually, if I’m really honest, at my best I’m just a carrier of God’s word. Shaped into poetry, with hope that you enjoy the light as much as I do.

TW: You’ve worked with big brands including Nike, Tiffany & Co., Calvin Klein and MINI, helping to place poetry within contemporary culture in a fresh and relevant way. What do you look for in a collaboration?

ST: It’s quite simple, I collaborate only on things that align with my beliefs. Tiffany & Co. is about a forever love, Calvin Klein is about loving the body you’re in and every stage and shape. Mini is about so many things I believe in.

Community, personality, colour, vibrancy. I love poetry so much, I love its power to pull out sentiment from a brand so it has been my greatest pleasure to fuse it with other things I love. Like cars, clothes and jewellery.

TW: You’ve spoken beautifully about poetry as a bridge between people. In a world that can feel increasingly divided, what role do you think artists and storytellers have to play?

ST: I recently finished reading a book that was written in old English. My writing over the weeks that followed went down a similar route. The way that I shaped my sentences resembled a writer of the 1800s. Language is something that can penetrate past our conscious. When we are given more language we become a witness to our own expansion. We can suddenly explain more clearly the things we feel and the things we go through. If we were to consistently equip ourselves with language to explain our why and our how, I am certain that somebody listening or somebody reading would come to understand and empathise with us first, before even considering passing a judgement. This is the most important moment in my own life and history to give people words to express themselves. We need more bridges.

TW: Which artist is currently inspiring you?

ST: Singer-songwriter Latir. He basically sings poems and I find that quite charming. The Yussef Dayes live experience bears an uncanny resemblance to where I hope to take my live show and the environments I hope to play in.

TW: What’s your favourite culturally curious spot in London?

ST: I adore the Tate. The exhibitions I’ve seen there over the past decade have left me speechless, smarter, worried, inspired. All of the things that remind me how rich this human experience is. Both Tate galleries are my kind of education. Unsuspecting, brave and penetrative.

TW: You’re stranded on a desert island. Which album, book and artwork do you take with you?

ST: To read, I take ‘The Forty Rules of Love’ by Elif Shafak. A novel as much as it is an anthology. To admire I take a painting my mother painted for my 25th birthday. She recreated the cover art of my 1st ever poetry collection ‘Somebody Give This Heart a Pen’. In turn, I wrote my 2nd and favourite poetry collection about her. It’s called ‘Wearing My Mother’s Heart’.

To listen to, which is an incredibly difficult question to answer by the way, probably this incredible jazz piano album called ‘Somewhere in the Middle’ by Niji Adeleye. I’m yet to have known a better composer.

TW: Who is your ultimate Monday Muse and why?

ST: The poets of old, who embraced the strange and wonderful requirements of their calling, with a certainty that I can only inspire to. They understood the life of a nomad and how essential it is to being a poet. They needed to travel, to move, to ask questions, to remain inspired. It was only recently I was told to live a life that compliments and enhances your great calling. I had never even considered that some of my habits came from my destiny as a poet. Studying the lives they lived has inspired me to do the same, to become the best writer I can be.