Walter Griffin (born August 1, 1937) is an American poet who lived in East Point, Georgia for decades and died at his home on November 30, 2020, at the age of 83.

"[6] He held various odd jobs, including a bellhop on Nantucket Island, a carnival barker in Florida, and a boiler room manager for construction companies in Ohio and Atlanta.

"[7] He eventually left the road, settled into the Atlanta suburbs, married, had a son (Paul Anthony Griffin), but was divorced a little over a year later.

[1][8] After a stint as adjunct instructor in poetry for Emory University's Evening Classes program, Griffin founded and led the Atlanta Poets Workshop for 27 years.

[1][2] While Griffin's success as a poet has been largely outside of the academy, he spent 11 years teaching in the poetry-in-the-schools programs, visiting more than 110 schools, colleges, prisons, and youth detention centers in three states.

[1] Griffin writes economic, elegant free verse that portrays losers, drifters, and outsiders in sympathetic, musically-rich language.

[5] Griffin’s poems are filled with transients and life on the road, many motorcycles, cars, big rigs, buses, hitchhikers and highways—so many one-night stays in boarding houses and cheap hotels—and a hovering of violence and death, with a pervasive loneliness and longing seeping through it all, especially for the lost past.