Peach Epoch - Tom Blake

Tom Blake is an author, poet and music journalist who also works part-time in a museum. Red Ceilings Press published his first chapbook, Ƨ, in 2023. His fiction has appeared in 404Ink and Mono, and his poems have been published by The Frogmore Papers, Anthropocene, The Shore and Stone of Madness. He achieved an MA with Distinction from Middlesex University's Novel Writing programme and he writes regularly for KLOF magazine. He lives in Swindon with his wife, two children and a garlic-loving cat.

“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,
Audio Antihero records