After Hours

“I enjoyed these poems immensely.”

– William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist


"Lucid, raw and honest poems, refrains that slide with grace and wit from the particular to the general, from past to present and back again, authentic and absorbing."

- novelist and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Little Buddha)


"Funny and fun to read, playful but also deadly serious…a depth of experience got at only in the best poetry."

- novelist Samuel Thomas Martin (This Ramshackle Tabernacle, A Blessed Snarl)


“In Epp’s second collection of poems, he explores diverse themes and imagery firmly rooted against a gritty postmodern backdrop.” – The Hamilton Spectator


“In After Hours, Darrell Epp proves himself as adept at bricolage as he is at ventriloquism. That he manages to not only interpolate discrete, oblique, and temporally disconnected texts and cultural signifiers into his poems, but does so while remaining consistently tethered to the visceral reality of his native Hamilton, a city he describes in “No Sweat” as “awesome and oblivious/and no help at all,” is no mean feat.”

Hamilton Arts & Letters


“In his patron saint of underachievers I think Epp has achieved something quite wonderful.”

Canadian Literature


In Darrell Epp’s After Hours, our hero awaits Dorothee’s return, while frankensteins invade Canada. Poltergeists patrol the hollowed-out manufacturing sector. The future’s a let-down; contingency plans are hastily constructed. Every moment’s an apocalypse as divine grace pummels Metropolis like a blizzard of fists.