Edward Ragg won the 2012 Cinnamon Press Poetry Award and his debut collection was A Force That Takes (2013). His second volume, Holding Unfailing (2017), charted the rise of modern China, followed by the more experimental Exploring Rights (2020); and And Then the Rain Came (2022), an exposition on love and well-being forged under the global pandemic and climate crisis. This new work, Vital Signs, draws on the inspiration of the medical vital signs. Its three parts – ‘Body’, ‘Pulse’ and ‘Breath’ – each feature nine poems that explore romantic love, death and the experiences of grief and loss in a poetry that is as embodied, pulsing with life and rhythmically breathing as its structure and themes suggest.