[6] In 1994 Ragg won a scholarship to Keble College, Oxford where he completed a BA in English Language & Literature (with First Class Honours).
[8] This led to his major critical study Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction (Cambridge University Press, 2010)[9] which was awarded a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 and was praised by J. Hillis Miller for its 'brilliant close reading of difficult poems'.
Holloway concluded: "If you give this work the space it needs, and the time it deserves, it will reward you greatly ... Ragg allows the poet's voice to carry its secrets, and sometimes, that is all we would want ...
"[20] Leading American academic critic Charles Altieri also commented of the collection: "Perhaps the most important feature of Ragg's poetry is the movement of strong enjambment that carries a feeling of thought taking place.
Thoughts arrive by traversing space and overcoming the resistance constantly of the poem for a moment being suspended before acts of thinking determine a path.
[25] Ragg's second collection Holding Unfailing (2017) was described by Sarah Howe as offering the reader "intriguing, supple poems that range across the world and across the landscapes of the mind.
"[26] The attention to place and landscape, especially in relation to contemporary China, was noted by Penelope Shuttle in her account of the book: "This collection has for its central focus scenes from contemporary China, observing with detachment and direct emotional intent those personal landscapes which fan out from Ragg's experiences of a country undergoing profound change.
Yet he reins back from the expected celebratory note, in order to sift truth from falsehood, to travel from height to abyss.
Maureen N. McLane observes of the volume: "Exploring Rights could not be more timely but is not only that: this book has the sustaining resonance of true works of art.
This is formidably intelligent yet also tender and approachable poetry—a poetry of care, linguistic brio, philosophical range, sharp assessment, and occasionally savage indignation.
Ranging from Catullus to Himmler to our era of surveillance, Ragg's many-tongued verse shimmers with a complex intellectual and sensual music.
"[27] Penelope Shuttle also observed of Exploring Rights: "This is a complex and intently-reasoned collection which addresses historic and contemporary issues with unflinching attention.