Tice, Arden, 1928-

Arden Tice. Part of the Belinda Subraman Pictorial Collection (PICT 000-584).

Arden Tice was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. She attended the University of Texas, Austin, where she majored in English and Psychology, receiving a bachelor's degree in l951. She did graduate work at the University of Texas, Austin; the University of Houston; and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. She received a master's degree in Clinical Psychology from Ohio St. Matthew University, Columbus, Ohio, in August 1971. She has published articles ( The Texas Observer, edited by Ronnie Dugger, began publishing her in the 1950s). An article in The Texas Observer about a trip through the south with Vivian Ayres Allen in 1957 and her three children, Debbie Allen, Felicia Rashad and Tex, prompted the paper to run off 10,000 extra copies. Tice's article described their experiences as they traveled south at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. She continued to publish essays and poetry during the 1960s and 1970s. Her chapbooks are inventoried and can be found in her archives. In Time to Tango, co-authored by Nichols Sands (Vergin Press 2002), is the story of a love relationship impacted by post traumatic stress disorder (Web site www.intimeto tango.com). Scenes from the Live Poets Society, Vol. I & Vol. II, Santa Fe, '01 & &'03, contain her poems. Tice's articles and publications have appeared under various names - Arden Tice, Arden Macnab, Arden Eckles and Hava Arden.

Her professional life included teaching on all levels, particularly teaching of Native Americans, Eskimos and Hispanics. She served as a social worker in community action projects of the 1960s and established and administered drug programs in the 1970s. From 1974-1981, Tice was a full-time instructor of Psychology at El Paso Community College; she was a psychotherapist in private practice in El Paso, Texas (1978-1988) working with Dr. Harold Kolmer, psychiatrist, and Dr. Lanis L. Bosworth, psychologist.

Published articles by Tice are on travel, artists, social issues and the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. She lived two years at Point Barrow, Alaska, before Alaska became a state, and traveled extensively in Mexico throughout the 1950s to the present. In 1986, Tice returned to New Mexico where she studied in the graduate creative writing program with Wolfe Mankowitz and Harvena Richter. She gave poetry readings at the University of California during Writers' Week, along with Judson Crews (spring 1986). She has presented writers' workshops, readings and painting exhibitions in the southwest. As director of Intercambio Cultural A Crossing the Borders of El Paso Juarez, she developed for the Mayor of El Paso, a series of free cultural events held in Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas.

During the &'60s and early &'70s, Tice was a busy and productive social activist. In Santa Fe, while working for the Juvenile Probation Department, she set up El Vicio, a methadone maintenance program. Later working in El Paso as Social Services Director of a juvenile delinquency project, she addressed problems of health, housing and food distribution. Her poems in Spanish were distributed for barrio protest marches. At one point, Tice taught psychology to the inmates at La Tuna Federal Penitentiary. She was the first woman to teach there.

With Belinda Subraman and S. Ramnath, two El Paso poets, she formed the first jazz poetry trio in El Paso (1991). The Read Camusians was a poetry/drama/jazz trio with a musical backup doing "sets on subjects varying from social concerns to erotica and humor. They presented a concert before 200 people at the University of Texas, El Paso, that included four poets and seven musicians. This was to celebrate the Tri-Centennial Library Association.

Tice's association with the artists and writers of the Southwest spans some 40 years and includes Vivian Ayres Allen, Robert Burlingame, Rafael Jesus Gonzalez, Jerry Romotsky (painter), Jim Jackson, Sandi Casillas, Judson Crews, Mildred Tolbert, Thurman Dillard (Santa Fe painter), Tommy Macaione (Santa Fe painter), Wendell B. Anderson, Dr. Wolfgang Cordan (from Mexico), Belinda Subraman (poet and publisher of Vergin Press and Gypsy Magazine), S. Ramnath (poet from India and husband of B. Subraman), Hal Bennett (novelist in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), Mark Weber, Helen Bonner, Susan Hauser (poet and essayist of Minnesota), and Irini Newman (a Greek poet). Tice and Robert Graves corresponded in the 1960s when she lived in Santa Fe.

Tice worked with Vietnam Veterans with post traumatic stress disorder from 1996 to 1998 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. From 1998 to 2000, she and Nichols Sands developed an ongoing writing program for veterans. She has been a member of Live Poets Society (started by Richard Brandt in 1991) since 1996 (see list of mem-bers on separate page). She is a member of the New Mexico Psychoanalytic Society.

Her life-long interests include working with people, poetry, psychoanalysis, play and the philosophy and practice of Buddhism. She has tried to live her life in accord with Freud's statement, "Work, love and play are the wellsprings of one's life. They should also govern it. Her private journals and photographs since the 1950s until the present are with Dr. Jo Ann B. Fineman, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

From the guide to the Arden Tice Papers, 1948-1987, (University of New Mexico. Center for Southwest Research.)