Down with the pseuds!

I've been talking to a friend over the Net. He has had some problems, and has joined something called 'The Social Inclusion Programme". They have been taught to use poetry as a method of expressing their emotions. Apparently, all their poems are about how angry they are with JobCentrePlus. Oh well. I read somewhere recently that all you have to do to write a poem is to have an emotion.
       If that is the case, why are we taught that poetry is the province of intellectuals? Specifically, literary intellectuals. They are hell-bent on persuading us that poetry is reserved for them, and they should be paid large quantities of taxpayer's money for reading it and discussing it with their friends. And if it's not 'intellectual' enough for them, they are quite happy to sneer at the writer. Why not? After all, if anybody can write poetry, and all you need is an emotion, then why should the 'intellectuals' be allowed to laze about at taxpayer's expense, jawing with their mates, and looking down their noses at the rest of us from an enormous altitude? Clearly they need to stifle that idea at birth.
        If the public were to grasp that anyone can write poetry, and it is a natural method of expression like prose, the grip of the professoriate on the taxpayer's wallet might loosen, and the lazy snobs might have to get a proper job.
        English, after all, is not naturally a university-level subject. You shouldn't really be at university if you aren't reasonably fluent in your mother tongue. So they teach Literature rather than English. All over the country, housewives are forming book groups and discussing what they are reading. They do it for fun, and do not expect to be paid. Isn't their activity essentially the same as that of a university English department?
        No doubt the professors will argue that their sneers at other people's scribblings are somehow more profound than those of the housewives, rather than merely more acerbic. Is it true though? And is it relevant? Writing is about communication. It is not like chess, where it is an advantage if your strategy is too rarefied for other people to understand.
        What is the essence of pseudo-intellectualism? I can recommend a subscription to Private Eye where it is regularly exposed. It is certainly the case that pseuds use jargon differently than real professionals like engineers, doctors and lawyers. Serious people use jargon for abbreviation, and a translation to plain English would be enormously longer. If the arcane witterings of the pseuds were translated, they would become shorter.