I am of Welsh-Scottish heritage, born in Berlin in the late 1960s to a Scottish soldier and a Nairobi-born book editor and teacher.

I worked with people with learning disabilities (1990s-2000s), developing work training.

I then led retreats and training days as Ammerdown’s Training and Interfaith Officer (2010s).

Since 2014, I’ve been a Lecturer in English in Swindon, UK.  Teaching is active listening: I learn daily from students how to enable them to express their gifts and capabilities.

I continue to lead music retreats, and training events, in various locations across the UK, including Ammerdown and Minsteracres, Belmont and Douai Abbeys, and Launde Abbey, as well as at numerous parishes and for diocesan and other organisations.  I’m now developing an Online Retreat House concept (see Retreat Videos | Euan Tait ).

I am a choral poet (librettist), gaining commissions internationally with composers such as Craig Hella Johnson,  Kim Andre Arnesen, Janet Wheeler, Chris Hutchings, Carson Cooman, and Paul Spicer. Several major work and a host of smaller pieces, including best sellers such as ‘Flight Song’ have resulted.  2018 saw the release of three of my texts on a major record label, Naxos.

My writing is a song of living, plentiful life behind what is seen, infused by reading and learning from the work of great international poets.

I believe passionately in getting to know the other; tolerance is not enough; an active respect means we honour, celebrate, engage and learn from each other. Difference is not a threat to our identity, but enriches it.

An exciting, continuing journey!

Publications and performances

Euan Tait is a European librettist, born in Berlin in 1968 and now living in the Wye valley, SE Wales.  He is also a teacher and a retreat leader (he has a YouTube channel), and is an orchestral double bass player.  His work is widely performed internationally, from short texts such as ‘Flight Song’ and ‘His Light in Us’ to major works such as the choral symphony ‘Unfinished Remembering’ (2014, with Paul Spicer, Birmingham, UK), the 70 minute cantata ‘The Wound in the Water’ (2016, Kim Andre Arnesen, Trondheim), the oratorio ‘As We Are Changed’ (2019, Carson Cooman, Boston, US),  the cantata ‘Song Rushes In’ (2022, Roy Rashbrook, Farnham, UK),  ‘Pilgrim Beatitudes’ (2023, John Muehleisen, Seattle), and the short opera ‘Drives’ (2023, with Mark Buller, Houston Grand Opera).  His full-length opera “Under the Greenwood Tree”, with Paul Carr, was performed by Dorset Opera in 2024.   His poetry has been published in Bete Noire (1990), South (2003), Abraxas (2007 etc),  Envoi (2003 and 2005), Obsessed with Pipework (2008), Battered Moons (2012), Ariadne’s Thread (2013), Poetry Cornwall (2014), Elbow Room (2014), The SHOp (2014), Ginosko (CA, 2017).  More details at https://euantait.com and at Wikipedia (Euan Francis Barclay Tait – Wikipedia ).

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