I love Inscape so much. I’ve worked as part of the journal for three years, and every week Inscape has been one of life’s good lights. I have made so many friends, learned so many things, and passed so many storms in Inscape. Every Thursday at 5:30, I have had a place to retreat, to circle up with my friends in the good work of writing. I tell you this so you understand when I say that it has been my goal as editor of Inscape to make an excellent creative writing journal that is worthy of both its readers and its submitters, but, more than anything, to ensure that Inscape makes better people of everyone it touches. I wanted to ensure that there was a room in the basement of the JFSB where, every Thursday at 5:30, those who were weary and heavy-laden could come and talk about stories and poems and be with people who love them and want them to be happy. That is the project of Inscape, and I will miss it dearly when I leave this campus. The mortal world is a hard place, but God allows us to make spaces within it that aren’t so bad.
“Inscape” is a term genesised by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It refers to the entirety any one thing’s physical qualities that, cumulatively, make up its individuality. The Inscape of Inscape, then, is comprised of each person who, were you to walk into our basement refuge on any given Thursday, would make up the spine, the heart, and the brain of our little journal. Complementary to “Inscape” is its brother philosophy, “Instress,” the idea that, when a being glimpses an Inscape, they are briefly privy to the divine impetus in its creation. While you are welcome, reader, to come and be part of the goodness of Inscape, circumstances probably prohibit your being with us here in Provo, Utah. Second best, then, is to read this issue, examine the physical qualities of the poems, stories, and art, and venture to draw out what God was thinking when he created this journal and when he created all of us.
– Noah Hickman