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, Griffiths 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. Her collection
Another Country was short-listed for the 2008 Forward Poetry Prize. Griffiths' fourth collection of poetry
Terrestrial Variations was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2012. It was described by Adam Thorpe (
The Guardian) as "sensuously wrought and even, at times, subtly erotic, her poems simultaneously evoke another level of pure abstraction, with words in place of coils of paint". In 2017 Griffiths’ fifth collection of poems
Silent In Finisterre was published. It was described by Sarah Broom in
The Times Literary Supplement as "a major achievement, outstanding, complex and subtle in thought, supple of tone and piercing in its observation". Her collection
Little Silver was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2022. ==Poetry volumes==