What particularly annoys me is the inarticulate use of the term 'navel gazing'. Navel gazing would encompass much of our greatest poetry including, for example, Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Gray's Elegy, Shakespeare's sonnets, the love poems of John Donne and much of Edward Thomas' poetry.

I teach a creative writing course and my advice is always to start with what you know; your own experiences, feelings, opinions. As an ice-breaker I often ask my learners to quickly write the first line or lines of their autobiography. The results are often astonishing and humbling. To dismiss anyone's efforts at self-expression in such a way as has been done here is churlish, arrogant and ignorant. No-one is saying you have to listen to the results but to try to discourage people from doing it is disgusting.