Driving Downtown to the Show

By Sara Crawford

Inspired by the Atlanta music scene of the early 2010s, Driving Downtown to the Show is an eclectic collection of poems that captures the essence of a young musician's life--from a pantoum about an overdose to odes to mix CDs to moments spent daydreaming at the coffee shop. Every poem in this collection features the name of a band that played in Atlanta venues in 2011, and a profound love of music is captured throughout.

 

Originally published in 2012.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sara Crawford
• Release date: Mar 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393884880

Sara Crawford

Sara Crawford is an author, a playwright, and a musician. Ever since she was five years old, she has lived for art in one form or another. This manifested itself as writing plays at age eight and convincing (forcing) the neighborhood kids to perform them on her driveway, auditioning for Atlanta Ballet's The Nutcracker three years in a row before finally landing a small role as a toy soldier, starting an all-girl band in high school, writing and producing her own plays and short films, and most recently, writing a YA trilogy about a girl who falls in love with her Muse (THE MUSE CHRONICLES). Sara has been an actress, a singer, a playwright, a songwriter, a guitarist, a keyboard player, a poet, a screenwriter, and an author of both fiction and non-fiction. She graduated in 2008 from Kennesaw State University with a B.A. in English and in 2012 from the University of New Orleans with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (emphasis in Playwriting). She has taught creative writing courses for Southern New Hampshire University, and she has been in numerous bands in Atlanta, including Pocket the Moon. She also loves to talk about books, music, and writing on her YouTube channel and talks art and creativity on her new podcast, Find Creative Expression. For more information visit http://saracrawford.net or https://www.youtube.com/user/saracrawford.

Book preview

Driving Downtown to the Show

––––––––

A book of poems by

Sara Crawford

Copyright © 2012 Sara Crawford

All rights reserved.

For Bill Lavender

And everything you taught me about poetry, art, and life.

Contents

Introduction

Driving Mixy #1: The ‘Songs That Actually Mention Driving’ Mixy

hip to death

Frozen Tundra

Mood Rings

The Future of Airports

The February Stretch

Driving Mixy #2: The ‘Best of Jump Little Children’ Mixy

Idle

Rabbits

Ignored

Ghost Party

Small Talk: Define Who You Are in Ten Seconds or Less

Sundays

She Doesn’t Remember

Driving Mixy #3: The ‘Moonlight Bride Album Re-Ordered so the First Two Tracks Come Last’ Mixy

At Cool Beans #1: Barista

EADGBe

The Art of Being Alone

Long Absent Friends

Bonding with Dad

At Cool Beans #2: Behind the Railroad Tracks

Warren and Rachel

Unconscious

Double Life

Driving Mixy #4: The ‘Driving Downtown to the Show By Myself’ Mixy

Burn

Contagious

Re-Invent the Moon

Band Names

Introduction

Driving Downtown to the Show is a project that came out of a poetry writing workshop I took in my MFA Low Residency program at the University of New Orleans. Our professor, Bill Lavender, had us come up with a poetry writing procedure, consisting of rules that we would set for ourselves which would determine our writing schedules and content. We were to decide on a title before writing any poems, and the goal was to have a cohesive collection by the time the semester was over. Because I was taking this class at a time when my main creative