Joshua Idehen

Joshua Idehen at Zebulon

Joshua Idehen

Lately, it feels like the world is one endless bad news cycle. Joshua Idehen isn’t here to pretend otherwise – but on the spoken word artist’s new album, I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got To Try, he provides a phenomenal sonic, poetic space. Made with his creative partner, musician Ludvig Parment, the album (out 6 March 2026) is an urgent but transcendent collection that holds you through it all, filled with grief, euphoria and hope.

I Know You’re Hurting… comes after the virality of Idehen’s track Mum Does The Washing, a wry and whipsmart poem examining how the world works (which started life as a Twitter thread), set to Parment’s spacious beats. The song has seen the pair propelled beyond Idehen’s wildest dreams this past year, with support from the likes of Jamz Supernova and Huw Stephens leading to sold-out shows and packed out festival performances including rammed crowds at Glastonbury and Green Man, an appearance on Later with Jools, and a support slot on Baxter Dury’s European tour this winter. For Idehen, this is all so special because it marked a new era of his career after around two decades of writing poetry. “In a nutshell, the song has changed my life,” he says.

British-born Nigerian Idehen had been more interested in film as a medium when he was younger. In fact, poetry was something he actively disliked back when he was studying at Hackney Community College and working in a bar in the West End. But one night when he got home from work and switched on Channel U, he was struck by Dizzee Rascal’s Vexed. “It had me in a trance, that kind of first person rant, stream of consciousness monologue, whatever you want to call it – but it sounds like him just pouring out, venting into the void.” And so, Idehen began to write, and over years of open mic nights and new connections, he became a need-to-know name in London’s poetry circuit.