news | Thursday October 15, 2026

Panax Has Landed!

The first Talonbooks fall 2026 poetry collection has arrived! Panax by Rob Budde is a deeply engaging work that blends ecocriticism, animal studies, and decolonial and countercolonial thought. Readers travel through time and get to know the plant Hoolhghulh, known in English as Devil’s Club.

From the poem “Toponym / Four”:

“hands in humus is humility – i am
of this place – and interactions without
interpretation run the show

that the sentient plants
reveal themselves – that moment
of pity on my screened, gridded eyes – and
dissolve the software codes means
the system is correcting itself

opened up eyes/lungs/hands/
mindful of more, a new awareness –
into the overgrown path of noncompliance – taught
by leaf and decumbent stem and
crimson berry, there, you
bow in piteousness

how fungal infections run
their course and then – a capacity
exceeded in tenement towers and flown-in cheeses – collapse
inward like an economy

the ecologies of Hoolhghulh teach
the frailty of fiction and – a thorn
in one thigh and wonder – bestow
the rich thick smell of recovery”

Join Rob Budde on this remarkable poetic and autoethnographic journey, and get to know Hoolhghulh as you never have before. Get your copy here.