I’m a former teacher (English and Drama), and retired Civil Servant. My life-long love-affair with theatre means that early retirement gives me more time to act, direct, and write; I’m a member of the Company of Ten, at the Abbey Theatre, St Albans, and also of the Ver Poets.
![Derek of DerekCoe.com](https://derekcoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Derek-Coe-225x300.jpg)
My first poem emerged (by mistake) at the age of 26. My then wife and I set off for an adventure in the Bahamas, on an initial 3 year contract with the Ministry of Overseas Development, to open a new all-age school on one of the remotest Bahamian Out-islands. The charter flight from Stansted caught fire and made a spectacular emergency crash-landing. After some delay, we and all our belongings eventually arrived in Nassau, were put on a mail-boat for the 3 day voyage to the island, and 8 hours later were sunk in a ferocious tropical storm. We lost everything but our lives.
I started to write an account of these experiences with the aim of selling the story to the Readers’ Digest – £1000 for stories of “Real Life Adventures”. Complete failure, but what I wrote became a poem instead … and that’s what I’ve been doing for nearly 50 years: writing anecdotes, fragments, verse.
And we stayed in the Bahamas for 5 years, then divorced on returning to the UK to lead what passes for a normal life.
Feel free to get in touch via my contact page.