“Rolli,” the artist and children’s writer also known as Charles Anderson, has his own expansions of the art of poetry in his first published
book, Plum Stuff. He illustrates his work with whimsical drawings that fit the playful texts. He has a fondness for food and wacky characterizations
that are typical of children’s poetry, although this book is meant for adults. It is torn between age-levels. Anderson’s tone is close to
e. e. cummings: a lot of nosethumbing at pretension (stuffy English people are favourite subjects – rather conventional targets). Like cummings, he
makes slapdash more than a conventional phrase: the poems leap and cavort and often move into nonsense. The drawings with their wavering lines and crayon colours are actually more enjoyable than the poems. Slap-and-dash sometimes works better in pictures than in language. mRb