Peach Epoch by Tom Blake
The poems in Peach Epoch are all linked by the overarching theme of sensual experience, and specifically the experience of art in its various forms (music, photography, film). They range from ekphrasis to elegy and are inspired in spirit and tone by modernism, classical Chinese and Japanese poetry and contemporary popular music. The peach, with its paradoxical symbolism of longevity, fecundity, decay and sexiness, is an important image in many of the poems, and draws together their various thematic strands. "With ‘Ƨ,' Blake's previous work, I had been taken in by his presentation of the world, both guardedly obtuse and drearily relatable. Though more accessible, ‘Peach Epoch' continues to explore that same love-hate relationship with birds, cafes, the mundane, the passing of time, and endings. Previously, I hadn't fully understood what had allowed Blake's writing to get under my skin the way it had until a line from this new collection exposed its core: "there's one thing I do well: I can appreciate loss.†Whether through food, music, ageing, death, or rubbish English weekends, Blake faces the horrifying indistinguishability of the finite and the infinite–while his words hit like a pillow scream.†Jamie Halliday
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