Lote Tree Press

21/12/2025

Alhamdulillah the competition chapbook is now available as an eBook. The paperback and hardback versions are on their way but we have had some delays with printing. The links to purchase them will be posted on the same page as the ebook once they are available (hopefully in the next week or two) inshaAllah, and we will send out an email announcing their availability (join our newsletter to make sure you get the notification - link in comments). The print versions will also be available through online booksellers iA.

The Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore Ecstatic Poetry Prize ran its inaugural competition in 2024-2025, as a joint Ecstatic Exchange and Lote Tree Press collaboration. The theme was The Ecstasy of Witnessing. Winning and highly commended poems were announced in March 2025, judged by renowned poets Sukina Noor and Baraka Blue. This book includes the winning entries, highly commended, shortlisted and longlisted entries.

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore (1940-2016, rahimahullah) was a pioneering American Beat-turned-Sufi poet. He authored dozens of poetry collections, in his own ecstatic, thoughtful, and often witty style, fusing Romantic, Surrealist and Sufi influences. Abdal-Hayy’s oeuvre spans sonnets, ghazals, and free verse, covering themes from family, love, death and nature to Mawlid, Hajj, Ramadan, prophets and saints, and more. His poems are a deeply personal prayer and reflection on the Divine perceivable in the everyday. In 2023, the publishing company he founded, The Ecstatic Exchange, published From a Shore Beyond Water: Selected Poems of Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore.

Cover artwork Whirling Arabesque by Lateefa Spiker

07/12/2025

Opalescent Soul by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore in his poetry collection The Flame of Transformation Turns to Light

31/10/2025

20/10/2025

from the poem “origami lungs” by Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu in her poetry collection “All the Birds Were Invited to a Feast in the Sky”.

19/10/2025

Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu explores themes of African diaspora, identity and faith as a Black Muslim through her compelling verse, navigating a poetic course between London and Ghana.

This is a book which excavates identity and self-knowledge, a journey from the spiritual realm which also attempts to stitch whole the frayed fibres of diasporic belonging. The areas explored range from Africa to spiritual awakening taking the reader on a journey to self.

i share this with you all
because a green boat
has since come to collect me

i saw a ghanaian fisherman
moored on the thames
and i didn’t think twice
as i sailed away

Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu’s verse evokes the beauty of the earthly and spiritual realms of human experience, navigating a poetic course from London to Ghana through themes of belonging and faith.

in the basement of the heart
cartographies of dispossession occupy the rhythm

Her poems dance at the intersection between the mundane and the sacred, weaving the everyday through with perceptions of the eternal, the ancient and the evanescent.

i thumb through each black orb, counting the time
breath and matter, life and death, another human story
with the same rosary that made its way to me
that may outlive my fingers
purchase these nights before they purchase you
rain pouring into the lake at lordship rec
and a hundred and one purple clouds pulsating-
the edge of our galaxy almost visible
through the london smog

17/10/2025

“ruins” by Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu in her poetry collection “All the Birds were Invited to a Feast in the Sky”

07/10/2025

From the poem “equator” by Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu in her poetry collection “All the Birds Were Invited to a Feast in the Sky”.

04/10/2025

“khimar” by Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu in her poetry collection “All the Birds Were Invited to a Feast in the Sky”.

02/10/2025

Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu explores themes of African diaspora, identity and faith as a Black Muslim through her compelling verse, navigating a poetic course between London and Ghana.

This is a book which excavates identity and self-knowledge, a journey from the spiritual realm which also attempts to stitch whole the frayed fibres of diasporic belonging. The areas explored range from Africa to spiritual awakening taking the reader on a journey to self.

i share this with you all
because a green boat
has since come to collect me
i saw a ghanaian fisherman
moored on the thames
and i didn’t think twice
as i sailed away

Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu’s verse evokes the beauty of the earthly and spiritual realms of human experience, navigating a poetic course from London to Ghana through themes of belonging and faith.

in the basement of the heart
cartographies of dispossession occupy the rhythm

Her poems dance at the intersection between the mundane and the sacred, weaving the everyday through with perceptions of the eternal, the ancient and the evanescent.

i thumb through each black orb, counting the time
breath and matter, life and death, another human story
with the same rosary that made its way to me
that may outlive my fingers
purchase these nights before they purchase you
rain pouring into the lake at lordship rec
and a hundred and one purple clouds pulsating-
the edge of our galaxy almost visible
through the london smog

22/09/2025

from the poetry book “Light Steps - A Poem on the Seerah of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ” by Ali Scully

Link in bio

12/09/2025

from the poetry book “Light Steps - A Poem on the Seerah of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ” by Ali Scully

Link in bio