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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Lasting, Ephemeral Radiance

"Lasting, Ephemeral Radiance" is a mini collection of poems exploring the juxtaposition of the permanence and transience of life. Each poem shares the common thread of depicting resonant feelings or subject matter (like death, for example), coupled with an air of otherworldliness through the infusion of supernatural, celestial, and surreal concepts.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

A Day on the Lake

This piece of work represents an important memory that I shared with my friends and family. It was an unforgettable experience where many core memories were made. The trip was is a beautiful place and it was spent doing some of my favorite things.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Love Letter to London

I wanted to capture the feeling of summer and growing up. As a teenager nothing is ever certain and its important to remember and romanticize the moment we will never get back. In this peace I go back and forth between the moment I'm describing an my thoughts now. You have to read between the lines to truly understand how I reflect my thoughts onto the moment.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Mable the Fantasy Electrician

This is a short selection from a bigger piece I have been writing. I wanted to combine something mundane, like electrician work, with things that invoke the fantastical, like magic or a tavern. The combination of old and new is something I wanted to play with, as well as ideas of cultural confusion and identity. This story and by extension this excerpt have been reworked multiple times. Starting as a political drama, then a family conflict, then a story about revolution, and finally I settled on this. A story about someone trying to make it in the world, with cultural baggage that affects almost every part of their life. I drew from my experiences of being a child of an immigrant to make characters imperfect in the practice of their culture. Like so many of us raised in between cultures, we forget or are scared to truly be what we are. I want to show a glimpse of that in my work.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

rising from my corners

When I first began my eating disorder, I broke down every month, knowing it was wrong and I should launch out of the cycle. I knew that the social media I was consuming was harming me and eating me up from the inside. But, it called to me at every turn and I could not let it go. Surprisingly, social media helped me make my recovery. One of my best friends is from an eating disorder support group founded on a social media platform. The poem represents my experiences and the raw feelings I had while both going through the disorder and coming out of it. It was not hard and relapses occurred, more often than I would have liked them to. Pressure from my parents came as stress from my school began increasing but this poem is my way of claiming and owning my recovery and proving that it happened and that I know that I can do it.

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Film, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Film, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Bricked

Bricked is a story about a power and how things can go wrong if they fall into the wrong hands. I wrote this film over the course of a month and after countless versions I'm glad how it turned out.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

self inflicting

Struggling with body dysmorphia and finding my identity, I found myself in a conflicted position where I could no longer differentiate between what I loved and what I hated – I felt like I hated everything. Whether it was the negative way I viewed myself, or my failing test score, or even just a lack of understanding my culture, I felt the only time I was able to express my feelings was through writing. I came up with “self inflicting” as a way to purge my insecurities onto paper. I identified my weakness, which wasn’t about how I looked or what I accomplished but about my inability to appreciate. Writing my feelings and creating “self inflicting” made me understand that I am someone to laugh with, make memories with, hang out with; the only negativity that exists about me is the negativity I put on myself (self inflicting). Through my writing, I have released my negative emotions and have come out a stronger person who now chooses to love herself.

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Film, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Film, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

now what?

This idea was sparked when I was considering an application film for the colleges I was applying to. The idea of switching between being vegan and not vegan could have some humor behind it, so I decided to try and make a film about it.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Disillusioned

I wrote these poems to process the complex emotions I’ve felt while nearing the end of my childhood. In the first poem, “Bon Appetite,” I touch on the double-edged sword that is creating art for public consumption. While creation is often cathartic, it has also made me feel naked and vulnerable—like a pig set for slaughter. As I’ve grown up and infused my work with more heart and truth, I’ve sometimes felt more like an object of others’ opinions than my own person. In the second poem, “Ivory,” I explore how humans justify and romanticize our often-selfish behavior. Everything we create and every decision we make comes with hidden costs, and all too often, we ignore these costs to appease our conscience. As I mature, I’m trying to confront and correct the ways in which I do this. The final poem, “Older,” is inspired by my changing relationship with an adult figure in my life, who I once idolized. As I get older, my eyes become more attuned to their flaws and their painful humanness. It’s almost like I’ve taken off the rose-colored glasses of youth, and while this is empowering to an extent, it also leaves me feeling… disillusioned about everyone and everything I once thought I knew.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

To Sarah

This ekphrasis poem is written about a line in the song "sarah" by alex g. It is a love poem about giving up yourself to someone else even if they dont necessarily reciprocate that love and loyalty. I wrote this poem for a class, but I feel like I really put my heart into it and I am very proud of it.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Poems from a Girl

A small collection of poems. The poem is about my parents fears and struggles and fears of coming into a new country with nothing but adream. The Haikus are about how deeply I think music can heal and how a rose is symbolic for many things

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Mama

I wrote this piece about my mother, who I constantly look up to, and my fears that I won't be able to grow into as good of a person as she is. This piece reflects my own insecurities and uncertainties as well as the complexities of mother-daughter relationships. The whole story is also a love letter to my mom, and a verbalization that I deeply appreciate everything she has done for me.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

You, Me, and the Waves

When I was taking creative writing last year, I struggled quite a bit since I never liked writing in the first place but taking that class changed me and help me think of writing as an art form. This year as a senior, I found writing my personal statements and supplements pretty fun. This poem was something I wrote earlier this year, during the process of writing this I never knew what the outcome would be and just like the waves my writing just went with the flow. And somehow my hands brought me to a poem about unrequited love which is a little bit funny because I was the happiest ever during that time. I had just came back from a trip in Hawai. I really loved the clear blue waters and decided to use that for the overall theme of my poem. This poem was written to mimic the way Walt Whitman used to write his poems the repetition, the lone lines written in free verse. This one of my favorite poems I've ever written and I'm happy to share it.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Gramps

Since my grandpa passed away from cancer in the September of 2023, I felt like something, or someone, was missing. I didn't realize how empty the house felt without him there. It felt like we were still, like everything was waiting for the day he would return. But what I wanted to capture most of all in my blackout poem wasn't the lonely wind, it wasn't the fading pictures, it wasn't even the hollow house. It was the hope, the growth. Although he's no longer here with us, he's everywhere. This blackout poem was designed to capture that feeling.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Rhythm of My Heart

My poems come from my heart really either when I am sad,angry,focused,happy really any emotions I try to write when it comes to mind I let it flow when it wants to I don’t think I will share what my poems mean to me and how I interpret them but rather let you as the reader let your feelings and experiences and emotions decide what you take them as

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

My Dog's Ashes Sit Next to the Christmas Tree

This small collection of poems is a metaphorical note on winter and the theme of loneliness that grows during the colder time of the year. Something I realized, while looking at my dogs ashes next to where the Christmas tree goes, is that those isolating emotions tend to be much more real to me during the holidays. All of the biggest emotional events that took place in my life happened in December and/or the winter time all together. The title of the collection is a metaphor for my personal outlook on the holidays, and how I still find a darkness in something I should be jovial about.

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Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin Creative Writing, 2024 Paulina Vo-Griffin

Within the Echoes of Blue Walls

People tend to ignore mental health. Going to in-patient treatment is often seen as wrong. We need to realize that mental health is crucial. I'm sharing my second in-patient treatment experience, where I battled between wanting to get better and staying in the familiar pain. It's a call for understanding and a reminder that love and the belief that things will be okay matter a lot in the midst of struggles.

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