Daniel Holmes, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for cultivating cannabis, is writing and publishing poetry on Instagram with the help of his parents, Wales Online reports.

The Welshman, 37, was arrested in July 2006. Five years later he was jailed for more than a decade and fined €23,000 for possession of around a kilo of cannabis.

“Four years into his sentence, Mr Homes, from Risca, near Newport, has taken up poetry which he is publishing online with the help of parents Mel and Kate, both retired teachers. Writing is how he stays strong.”

The online news porta quoted his father as saying: “He’s keeping himself strong by reading and writing and trying to stay positive. I just think the fact of being locked up with nothing to do, he wanted to get his thoughts out of his head because they were going round and round and driving him mad.”

 “At the moment it’s mostly things that stem from the situation he’s in but he tries to write a little bit about nature and his love of nature. He writes largely in an attempt to stay positive and think about the future.”

Daniel’s mother Kate wrote to Welsh poet John Evans about her son’s poetry and he recommended using the social media site Instagram as vehicle to showcase his poetry, according to Wales Online.

Titles of poems Daniel has written so far include Mine is One Voice and Each Day, as well as shorter poems and haikus.

Daniel’s father says Daniel has been dictating poems to them over the phone every day. “I have been compiling it all on the computer with the view of publishing them.”

Mr Holmes had filed and lost an appeal in Malta but his family have now taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights. If the appeal there fails as well they plan to apply for him to be transferred to a UK prison.