Griffiths was born in Middlesex. As a teenager, he became a Hell's Angel, and his experiences with bikers provided material for many of his 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 lists 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 has since published a number of editions and translations of Old English texts.
Griffiths is a prolific poet and has published widely in Britain and the United States. In recent years he has been living in Seaham, Durham and running Amra Press, which publishes his poetry and books of local studies. His 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).
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