2022 Jane Martin Poetry Prize

Jane Martin Prize for Poetry 2022

The Jane Martin Poetry Prize is awarded to poets aged 18-30 who are resident in the UK. Now in its 12th year, this national competition was established in memory of Girton alumna Jane Elizabeth Martin. This year’s winner with ‘Al-Shadhili’ was Lev Crofts (Semyonovich), a Scottish writer and school teacher currently living in London. He graduated last year from St. John’s College, Oxford, where he read Archaeology and Anthropology. While at university he edited The Isis Magazine, was the fiction editor for the Oxford Review of Books, and his poetry, prose and non-fiction has been published variously in The Isis Magazine, Industry Magazine, 1555 Magazine, The Mays Anthology and The Common Ground Magazine. Since graduating he has joined the Teach First programme and works as an English teacher in a statemaintained academy in Hounslow. Al-Shadhili was a Sufi mystic who – they say – invented coffee in order to stay awake for dhikr, a repetitive praising of God through the Islamic proclamation of faith (shahada) Al-Shadhili

Al-Shadhili

Unfocused by twelve hours of dhikr sung, Al-Shadhili, eyebags like pinned tent flaps, Stopped chanting shahada, stood-down his lips, And, returning to, removed himself from among The muttered ecstasy of their desert masjid, His praying brothers’ eyes so shut that under the lid No self could sit and block the road to God.

Through moon-lit fatigue, he could hear them singing still. In that air, the droning hum swirled the stars and made Heaven of the sands. Once-pious thoughts strayed To the notes alone, saw no godly meaning in each trill But ecstasy in its mere sound; a spiritual delight That was animal only. He awoke again to holy night, Shocked that half-dream had swept him from God.

Confronting the final temptation, sleep, Al-Shadhili shuffled brown beans from a sack. Grooved desert-horse hooves, ridged like a camel’s back, Pattered on the copper base and made a heap. He picked up a sandstone, ground them into divine Powder and drank through his nose dry Arabian wine. With this in a drink, he thought, I can focus on God.

Like sun-dried leather, he watched the water tan And brew clouds in which an oaky pleasure hung. In a sip, a full, bitter rapture lapped on his tongue. It whirled with the music, like soft wind in a dune. He tipped out the dregs and watched the sand bruise, Hellish black, which accused him: was God his excuse For coffee, or was coffee his way to God?

© Lev Crofts (Semyonovich)