A letter to writers, poets, photographers , artists of all types, people who love to read for the sake of reading not because you have to as part of the school curriculum. The question I pose myself is there room for the enthusiastic amateur . And not just for those who have done a professional writing & editing course. Can we not see that someone from whatever background gains joy from their artistic pursuit and should be considered just as seriously as the university literary types.

Writing , poetry is a joyful thing connecting heart and mind, it should not be held to any less esteem than in academia. The ones that pull you up on your adverbs, verbs, past tense, finding a way to put down the amateur because of their so called superiority. You may think I’m bitter in this piece but I know I’m not. I’ve had my piece of glory in magazines, anthologies, writing gigs, nominations. I’m at the point I don’t care anymore. The intellectual masturbators who not so secretly look down on the amateur. They are the ones who fall over Bukowski , yet have never lived in a rooming house, been on the edge of madness due to doubt , insecurity. I lived in rooming houses they are not something romantic, some magical place from the Wizard of Oz. I knew a poet or should I say a human being that considered people who published or got published by on line magazines as somehow on the lower rung of humanity. That if you didn’t get paid, didn’t win prizes, couldn’t name this or that poet that somehow you are an inferior being. In short there is a scene to be part of, to be recognised by your peers and if you weren’t in that group well then you weren’t a poet. The snobs of the outsider scene I call it. I knew someone who was a musician. We were having breakfast , a breakfast I paid for, and mid way through my eggs Benedict he said, you know I was famous once, once was bad enough but he said it three times before I even hit my coffee. What do you want me to say I said. Do want me to do cartwheels down the street. The all black brigade have something to answer for I figure. The so called hip . All I wanted to do was write because I loved writing. I loved Peter Matthiessen telling me about the crystal monastery in upper Dolpo. I wanted to be Nick Adams in Hemingway’s short stories. Marlowe in going up the Congo. I wanted to be Scout climbing trees, walking that road to Wigan Pier , to be a nightingale for thirty seconds , to lay down on leaves of grass. I wanted to be Jim on treasure island, be the footpath of Jean Paul Sartre , the bug in room so and so in Prague, be the perfume for a poet in Konya. The road of Kerouac , the music of Laurie Lee in Spain, a writer in Hydra in clean straw for nothing. Writing, taking photos , playing golf, travelling , loving , I want to do it as the amateur for the love of it. I don’t care about your intelligence, your academic degrees, your inhouse cool, or even quite frankly WordPress. I write for my pleasure simple as that.