On the Road to Cadianda by Janet Hatherley
Janet Hatherley's collection On the road to Cadianda brings together her poems set in Türkiye, where she taught in the 1980's and where she often returns. Her favourite place is Uzümlü, a village up in the mountains near Fethiye, and many of the poems are about what she sees there: the details of nature, weather and everyday meetings with the people of the village. Cadianda is a site of Roman and Lycian remains, hidden in the forest, that you can walk to from the village. There are poems about Lycian tombs, the people who have walked before, the links with the past.
The sonnet sequence embedded in the collection is about Hurrem, the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, who was captured as a slave in the sixteenth century. History, being patriarchal, has written her in a bad light, so Janet has written these sonnets from her side – a feminist perspective – referencing research into surviving letters and chronicles.
Reviews
"Collection opens with a powerful poem telling of two felled pines and which captures perfectly our emotional compact with trees. So strong is the poem I was encouraged to read on; to find that trees are not her only emotional connection, is what Janet Hatherley does, telling of her fascination with wild tortoises for instance.
The tightly descriptive poems tell of her life and repeat visits to Türkiye, and of incidents with butterflies, moths, birds, gecko, goats, sheep… She captures both the modernity and the agelessness of the place, where empires and tyrants have come and gone, and markets and people go on. Here we are again, she seems to saying, and with a nudge says, ‘Look at this.’ Some boys on bikes, a pilfered tomb, man on a horse, more butterflies, bird, moth… So much of the slow heat conveyed brought to mind my own time in the Trodos with Turkish Cypriot friends."
"When I reviewed Janet’s pamphlet in The Journal I said that the only disappointment I had was coming to the end of it. Her On the road to Cadianda has more than compensated. Although I did find one aspect disappointing. The few less successful poems here, those that lacked authenticity, were those where she attempted to follow a rhyming scheme or a particular form. They stand in contrast to all the tightly descriptive free verse which every time drew me in and which I found enchanting thoughout. Because there is a stubborn love at work here, not only of love for humanity, but for all life. Evident especially in her long Hurrem Sonnet Sequence where she imaginatively tells of Hurrem, consort to Suleiman the Magnificent, and of Hurrem’s many efforts to make people’s lives better. Latterly germane too, ‘…What is war’s purpose, / so many drown in its ruin…’ She is unafraid to mix the ordinary with the exotic, or to find the exotic ordinary. When accidentally stuck in a garage’s grotty lavatory she draws solace from Rumi: ‘You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.’ This is not a tourist’s view of Türkiye, but it is the Türkiye that I so wish tourists were seeing."
— Sam Smith (owner & editor, The Journal)
"Janet Hatherley’s poems are tender, wise, and brilliantly observed. Hatherley, an expert storyteller, combines formal craft with an intense appreciation and respect for the world she finds herself in. [...] The collection includes a stunning sonnet sequence which shifts historical perspective to give a piercing insight into how Hurrem, the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, carves out a life for herself as a powerful leader from her beginnings as a captured slave. The personal permeates the political and history dances with the present in mesmerising poems that both educate and enchant." — Lisa Kelly (Poet and co-editor of Magma Journal)
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