For the eighth time since 2003, the campus literary club “Scribblers” produced its annual literary magazine, Shook Foil, which the club will sell this weekend during Homecoming. The magazine consists of poems, essays, short stories, photographs and other artistic submissions from students of all majors and will sell for $2 each. The proceeds will go to pay for the cost of production for next year’s issue.
Harding alumnus Taylor Carr began Shook Foil in 2003 with money he received after selling a particularly valuable bottle cap he found earlier that year for $100. Carr and several other students bought the paper, photocopied the submissions, manually assembled the magazines and did all of the artwork on their own. Scribblers adviser Dr. Terry Engel said the magazine has always been primarily produced by students with the student body in mind.
“They wanted something that was completely student run, but they also wanted to have something that was a venue for students to submit creative work,” Engel said.
The publication was originally named after a line from “God’s Grandeur,” a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”
Junior Maddi Nelson, the current president of Scribblers who also serves as Shook Foil’s editor-in-chief, said the magazine’s title is representative of what she views to be the ultimate goal of Shook Foil.
“‘God’s Grandeur’ is one of my favorite poems actually,” Nelson said. “I think when we are writing, what we would really like to do is exemplify that grandeur of God.”
Nelson said literature is a special way for people to communicate with one another and is a window into the minds of people from other times. She said she hopes Shook Foil can provide such a window into the minds of Harding students through the years.
“I think that literature is a good way for people to communicate to each other in a different way, a special way,” Nelson said. “It connects people from different backgrounds. I guess a story, even though it might not be a true story about a certain person, it could tell more about what a person is thinking and feeling than just a short conversation. I just think that collecting literature from students is a good way to kind of get a history of what students are thinking and feeling during a certain year.”
Freshman English major Shelby Griffith submitted four free-verse poems and one creative nonfiction essay to this year’s edition. Griffith said that the opportunity to publish her work is a good way to not only gain experience, but also to express her appreciation of important individuals in her life.
“Submitting to Shook Foil was great practice for me as an aspiring author to have and was a way to share myself with Harding,” Griffith said. “I write because I want my readers to know that they’re not alone. The poems show the beauty of sorrow — a light shining in the darkness — and the essay is a tribute to a role model back home. I wanted to thank her and to share her beauty with the world.”
