Bill Griffiths - Overview

Overview

Griffiths was born in Kingsbury, Middlesex. As a teenager, he became a Hells Angel; his experiences with bikers provided material for many early poems. From 1971, these poems were published in Poetry Review, under the editorship of Eric Mottram, and by Bob Cobbing's Writers Forum. He also collaborated on a number of performance poetry pieces with Cobbing and others.

Griffiths soon started his own imprint, Pirate Press, which published work by himself and other like-minded poets. In addition to Cobbing and other Writers Forum poets, Griffiths listed his early influences as Michael McClure, Muriel Rukeyser, John Keats, George Crabbe, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English poetry.

In 1987, he obtained a Ph.D. in Old English from King's College London. He published a number of editions and translations of Old English texts and authored Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic.

Griffiths was a prolific poet who published widely in Britain and the United States. In later years he lived in Seaham, County Durham, and ran Amra Press, which published his poetry and books of local studies.

Griffiths' books of poetry from other publishers include Rousseau and the Wicked (Invisible Books, London, 1996), Etruscan Reader 5 (with Tom Raworth and Tom Leonard) (Etruscan Books, Buckfastleigh, 1997), Nomad Sense (Talus Editions, London, 1998), A Book of Spilt Cities (Etruscan Books, 1999), Ushabtis (Talus, 2001) and Durham and other sequences (West House Books, 2002). A substantial collection of his work was also published in Future Exiles (Paladin 1992). In 2010, Reality Street released Collected Earlier Poems (1966 – 80).