Julene Tripp Weaver, a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, has three prior poetry collections; truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (Finishing Line Press, 2017), which won the Bisexual Book Award, four Human Relations Indie Book Awards, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards; No Father Can Save Her, (Plain View Press, 2011); and a chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues, (Finishing Line Press, 2007). Her poems have appeared in many journals including: HEAL, Autumn Sky Poetry, Oye Drum, Poetry Super Highway, As it Ought To Be, and elsewhere. Recent anthologies include: Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice, I Sing the Salmon Home, Writing Through the Apocalypse, The Power of the Feminine I: poems from the feminine perspective, Volume 2, and Nerve Cowboy Selected Works 2004-2012. Her third poetry book, truth be bold, empowered her to start writing a memoir about her life and work as a long term survivor. She is an 'Artivist' in the Through Positive Eyes Project sponsored by The Gates Discovery Center and UCLA Art and Global Health. The goal is to eliminate stigma about AIDS by sharing stories. She was a Jack Straw Writing Fellow (2023). Essay publications include: The Guardian, Hags on Fire, The Muse (McMaster University), Mollyhouse, which nominated her essay for a Pushcart. Her essay, "Babes With AIDS," about being one of the founders of the Babes Network, a peer support organization for women living with HIV, won Honorary Mention for the Christopher Hewitt Award in Nonfiction, A&U (AIDS & Understanding) Magazine.

Other poems on the web by Julene Tripp Weaver:
"Slow Growth"
"Pupal Soup"
Two poems
"Nightmare Presidency"
"Dyad"
"Swept Under the Rug"
"Lil' Tee"

Julene Tripp Weaver's Website.

About Slow Now with Clear Skies:

"'I must/ slow down, touch earth, find/ the smooth stone in my pocket...' These lines are at the heart of both Julene Tripp Weaver's poem, 'Safe Space,' and her necessary poetry collection. Weaver uses images from her own life and the viruses that plague our world to witness suffering. And to acknowledge that all of us have been changed over the Covid years. Everyone lives on a spectrum/ of health and neuroticism, she tells us. She offers no easy answers to how we might heal in a dangerous world when even our closest relationships might betray us. My mother never enters at the right/ time, even in my dreams, she confides. Yet she writes that all of us can find back doors/ into the body after illness, loss and the hauntings of memory. In post-pandemic America, this is the book I needed to read. Weaver, an herbalist, knows we and the earth can heal together. Find channels that soothe. ...Send anxiety into the earth. One of these channels is poetry.The title of the collection comes from the final line of the poem 'I've Lived Through One War.' She rallies us with the lines: We must ask/ new questions, find unconventional answers...It's time/for massive change.../ Our planet, slow now with clear skies"
—Joanne M. Clarkson

"There's something going on here. She's done explaining. Done justifying. Done worrying well. She's wailing. Grieving. Believing. Bringing her healing powers. Her nurturing. Her whole wise woman self. Looking unflinchingly at this life. After plagues and pandemics. After war. After global ecological ruin. After injustices. After loss after loss. There's a surge of possibilities: Survival. Gratitude. Incantations. Touch. And most of all-hope."
—John Burgess