Jane Griffiths (poet) - Career and Writings

Career and Writings

Griffiths was born in Exeter, England, and brought up in the Netherlands. She studied English at Oxford University, where she won the Newdigate prize for her poem "The House". After working as a bookbinder in London and Norfolk, she returned to Oxford to gain a doctorate with a dissertation on the Tudor poet John Skelton, and became an editor on the Oxford English Dictionary. Her poetry gained her an Eric Gregory Award in 1996.

Griffiths taught at Oxford University’s St. Edmund Hall, before becoming a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She was appointed a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Bristol in 2007. In 2012, she left her position as Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol to become a CUF Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow of Wadham College. According to her university page, Jane works primarily on the poetry and drama of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Her first monograph on John Skelton was published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in 2005 and she is working on a second monograph, on marginal glosses, which is also to be published by OUP.

Griffiths' fourth collection of poetry Terrestrial Variations was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2012. Her collection Another Country was short-listed for the 2008 Forward Poetry Prize.