Griffiths, Bill

(1948- )

   Born in Kingsbury, Middlesex, he graduated from University College, London, in 1969 with a B.A. in history and gained a Ph.D. in Old English from King's College, London, in 1988. Since 1990, he has lived in Seaham on the Durham coast, where he has produced titles on local history, dialect and placenames. He has also published a number of editions and translations of Old English texts. He is an officer of the Durham and Tyneside Dialect Association and Story of Seaham heritage group. He runs his own publishing company, Amra Press, which publishes his poetry and books of local studies. His experiences as a teenage Hell's Angel provided material for many of his early poems. His first poems were published in Poetry Review and in Writers Forum circa 1971. Griffiths is a prolific poet and has published widely in Britain and the United States. Some of his publications: Rousseau and the Wicked, 1996. Nomad Sense, 1997. A Book of Spilt Cities, 1999. Durham and Other Sequences, 2002. Some of his poems: "Building: The New London Hospital," "Compass Poem," "For PCeltic: found text from Machen," "Into Prison," "Terzetto: Brixton."

   Sources: Bill Griffiths' Home Page (http://www.bgriffiths7.freeserve.co.uk/subindex.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New British Poetry, 196888. Gillian Allnutt, Fred D'Aguiar and Ken Edwards, eds. Grafton Books, 1989. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).