Sanctuary Walls (2023)

On July 27, 2008, a man entered the sanctuary of a Unitarian church in Knoxville, TN with a shotgun and opened fire. Eight people were shot and two were killed. In a manifesto, the man claimed he chose the church as a target “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country.”

I was not in the sanctuary when this act of violence was carried out, but the attack on the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church violated the sanctuary of a widespread community of people, including myself, who identified with and supported the values upheld by their congregation.

The loss of life depicted by Sanctuary Walls results in no glory and spreads no message of salvation. In that sense, this work is not a Passion nor is it a Requiem. These poems which I have selected from Brian Griffin’s larger work, Single Lens Reflex, expose the grotesque and surreal nature of violence. While I could not encompass the full scale of the devastation as portrayed by Single Lens Reflex, I intended for Sanctuary Walls to be an experiential companion piece, an unflinchingly direct representation of Griffin’s words.