robin vaughan-williams
What Data Saw, a new collection of poetry by Robin Vaughan-Williams, on sale from Lost Souls Publishing from September 2026.
In Robin Vaughan-Williams’s latest collection, Data is reimagined as a mythological being in the process of becoming. Unsure yet who or what she is, or the extent of her powers, Data attempts to blend in, understand, and communicate in a human world where she both does and does not belong.
She appears on Secret Millionnaire, becomes the target of protest movements, witnesses political violence, and is used by humans for their own ends. She needs to feed; but if everything is text, where can she find her mouth?
It has been suggested the Martian school of poetry has never had a legacy—until now. Robin Vaughan-Williams's protagonist Data is the ultimate observer, impassive as a CCTV camera, resilient as a colony of ants, shapeshifting, translating an illogical world into slivers of quasi-meaning. Here is a collection poised on the cliff-edge of AI, its every page prompting the reaction 'No, that's not how it is'. But then we realise that yes, that is how it is. Welcome to the machine. (Russell Thompson)
Robin Vaughan-Williams’s Data conjures an agile and darkly comic poetic presence. Lurid and yet poised, fantastical and yet disturbingly linked to a reality—this is a poetry that pretends to entertain whilst injecting its deadly analysis. ‘She [Data] makes things up no denying it | follows the chain of signifiers to their illogical ends. | Without a body to ground her | without a nail to hold her.’ (Mark Goodwin)
This is a powerful and fiercely original collection, in which data is not only personified but made into a legend. Fusing both a lyrical and timeless sensibility and an acute contemporary perspective, this collection adeptly reflects both our urgent concerns about big data and AI, and our need for the universal and mythic truths which flow through the poem's lyric voice. (Anna Saunders)
Format: paperback (A5)
Pages: 40
Publisher: Lost Souls Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-9195161-2-7
Cover image by Richard Bolam, from his Tabula Rasa series.
Price: £10 from Lost Souls
Robin Vaughan-Williams is a poet and producer based in London, UK. His previous publications are The Manager (Happenstance Press) and How to Fix a Human (Sampson Low), and poems have appeared in magazines such as Acumen, Under the Radar, Long Poem Magazine, Dream Catcher, and Anthropocene. His PhD on the Bakhtin Circle fueled an ongoing interest in the voice as material, from open mics and performance-collage events to his practice in collaborative poetry improvisation. His work was highly commended for the Erbacce Prize 2026, and he has hosted live literature series in Sheffield, Nottingham, and Oxfordshire.
If you'd like to book Robin to read from What Data Saw or for an event covering issues touched on by the book, send a DM via @robinrvw on Instagram or fill in the zeroquality contact form.