Rick Benjamin is Director of Student Learning & Community Engagement with Humanities & Fine Arts and an Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature & Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara. In his course titled, “Wild Literature in the Urban Landscape,” Benjamin combines the rigorous study of poetry as a wisdom medium with a traditional poetry workshop, while also integrating communal practices like the Japanese art of Renga (both a creative and spiritual form toward more enlightened thinking) into ritual poetic exploration & expression. Rick Benjamin has also taught at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, Goddard College, Haverford College, Haystack, New Urban Arts, as well as at countless schools, community and assisted living centers. He has also served as the state poet laureate of Rhode Island from 2012 to 2016. His books of poetry include Passing Love (Wolf Ridge Press, 2010); Floating World (Wolf Ridge Press, 2013); Endless Distances (Lawrence & Crane Publishers, 2015); Some Bodies in the Grief Bed (Homebound Publications, 2021), and his essays and interviews have appeared in Identity Theory, The Providence Journal, La Petite Zine, and American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics. Benjamin’s forthcoming work is titled The Mob Within the Heart.