Photo by Javier Monjas
Hilary Tann (born November 2, 1947, Llwynypia, Glamorgan, Wales, U.K.; died February 8, 2023, Schuylerville, New York), Welsh American composer, professor of music theory and composition, and haiku poet. She taught at Union College, Schenectady, New York, from 1980 and retired as John Howard Payne Professor of Music Emerita. She was an internationally acclaimed composer, having received numerous grants and commissions and published more than 40 CDs. Tann was a founding member of the Route 9 Haiku Group (2000) and its biannual journal/members’ anthology, Upstate Dim Sum (2001). With John Stevenson she cochaired the Haiku North America 2015 conference in Schenectady. Her haiku appeared in the main haiku journals, particularly The Heron’s Nest, and was anthologized in Nigel Jenkins et al., Another Country: Haiku Poetry from Wales (2011), Jim Kacian et al., A New Resonance 8: Emerging Voices in English-language Haiku (2013), Marlène Buitelaar, The Scent of Music: Haiku with a Touch of Music (2013), Roberta Beary, et al., Wishbone Moon (2018), and Robert Epstein, All the Way Home: Aging in Haiku (2019), among others. Tann was the author of the Haikupedia article “Onawa Poems”; she last resided in Schuylerville, N.Y.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.