{"product_id":"the-empty-grandstand-9780645984019","title":"The Empty Grandstand","description":"The wild secrets of boyhood is where Lloyd Jones sets off in his first book of poetry; intoxicated with images, and invoking dream spaces where language is forever in play.\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLloyd Jones was seven years old the first time he climbed high into a grandstand to watch rugby with his father. The experience was baptismal. From his new elevated perspective Jones believed he could see everything that mattered - a field of play that rolled out, green with promise, from suburban New Zealand to the wider world.\u003cbr\u003eThe grandstand is a guiding metaphor for these questing narrative poems that reach back into childhood and forward into the life of a writer constantly experimenting with form and voice.\u003cbr\u003eJones writes of the wild secrets of boyhood - riding dogs, falling from trees, destroying the class ukuleles, learning to sail in small boats. He is alert to the airless small-town grievances that must inevitably be escaped.\u003cbr\u003eAs an aspiring young writer Jones travelled widely, testing his identity against difference - places, people, politics and importantly, language.\u003cbr\u003eThe more recent poems are a re-assembling of coordinates and a return to the local view. The grandstand has long been decommissioned - it's a housing estate now, but the poems are full of air and greenery. Dream spaces where language is forever in play.\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Upswell Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50920552202514,"sku":"9780645984019","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_9bf28884-8435-4ab7-ab58-532917a5ff5e.jpg?v=1738908948","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-empty-grandstand-9780645984019","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}