Poetry. Natalee Caple made quite a splash with her first two books, The Heart is its Own Reason, a short-story collection from Insomniac Press, and The Plight of Happy People in an Ordinary World, a novel from House of Anansi Press. With A MORE TENDER OCEAN Caple turns her hand to poetry, and the results are no less dazzling. The poems were written using a Surrealist technique called automatic writing—a kind of poetic impressionism after speed-reading. The effect is a kind of dreamlike state—everything isn't quite as it should be, as though it had all been seen through the facet of a diamond. The poems are lyrical, erotic, gentle, happy, sad and strangely beautiful. A MORE TENDER OCEAN is unusual but immensely moving and compelling, tender but not maudlin. "What goes on seems ordinary," writes Caple. Rest assured, it is not.

Natalee Caple is the author of four books of fiction and two books of poetry, including the novel The Plight of Happy People in an Ordinary World (Anansi), the short story collection The Heart is its Own Reason (Insomniac), which was positively reviewed by the New York Times and has been optioned for film, the poetry collection A MORE TENDER OCEAN (Coach House), which was nominated for a Gerald Lampert Award, and the novel Mackerel Sky (Thomas Allen/St. Martin's). Caple is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at the University of Calgary. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.