AN award-winning Penarth poet has returned to the country from which his father fled to escape the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin - to lead an international creative-writing workshop.

TS Eliot Prize and Wales Book of the Year winner, Philip Gross, a professor at the University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, travelled to Estonia for the workshop, and took to the blogosphere while there with a series of posts about his visit.

A wartime refugee, Philip’s father was in his early twenties when his native country was occupied – first by the Soviet Union, then by the Germans, then the Soviet Union again between 1939 and 1944.

And like many Estonians, he fled.

Living in a Displaced Persons’ Camp in Cornwall, he met and married the village schoolmaster’s daughter, who gave birth to Philip soon after.

The creative workshop was held in Tallinn, capital of Estonia, and the professor said the trip had a profound effect on him.

“This visit has a more than academic meaning for me,” said the Park Road resident.

“It was very emotional as well. My forthcoming book of poems, Deep Field, is about my father’s story.

“Estonia is a small country whose dearest wish since regaining its independence from the Soviet Union has been to be an ordinary country, like all others," he added.

“I grew up with a sense of it as mythical, a story that my father sometimes told.

“Visiting was an absolutely great experience and one that taught me a lot about Estonia, its culture, and its people.”

Philip’s diary can be accessed on http://philip-gross.blogs.glam.ac.uk/