ANTHOLOGIES

World Record: international voices from Southbank Centre's Poetry Parnassus
edited by Neil Astley and Anna Selby

ISBN 1 85224 938 2
Bloodaxe, June 2012, £10 pbk

Introduced by Simon Armitage, this is an international anthology of work by poets from all the countries taking part in the 2012 London Olympics, featuring a poem from each of the 204 Olympic nations.

Winning Words: Inspiring poems for everyday life
introduced by William Sieghart

ISBN 9780571277056
Faber, May 2012, £12.99, hbk

'Faster, higher, stronger: winning words are those that inspire you on to Olympian goals.' Not necessarily sporting poems, but poems to inspire, including well-known favourites and a few less familiar choices. Foreword by Sebastian Faulks. 

SMALL PRESS

The shortlist for the 2012 Callum Macdonald Award for pamphlet poetry publishing is:

A Natural Curiosity by A C Clarke (New Voices Press)
Ecstatics, a Language of Birds, by Lesley Harrison and Laura Drever (Brae Editions)
Happyland by William Hershaw (FRAS Publications)
Upon a Good High Hill by Helen Lawrenson, (Perjink Press)
Linked Lines by Hayden Murphy (Roncadora Press)
Some Consequences of Saying Yes by Mary Thomson (Mary Thomson)
Dain Do Shomhairle by multiple authors (Scottish Poetry Library)

SINGLE AUTHOR

Antigonick
by Anne Carson, illus Robert Currie, Bianca Stone

ISBN 1852249390, Bloodaxe, May 2012, £15, hbk

Comic book? Translation of Sophocles' Antigone? Single author collection by Canadian superstar Anne Carson? All of the above, with text blocks hand-inked on the page by Carson and Robert Currie, and separate translucent vellum pages where Bianca Stone's drawings overlay the text. Promises to be weird, stunning and wholly original. You can see this preview image and more on the blog of US publishers' New Directions.

CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE

Green Glass Beads: A collection of poems for girls
selected by Jacqueline Wilson 

ISBN 9781447205142
Macmillan Children's Books, June 2012, £6.99, pbk

A wide-ranging anthology specially geared towards girls, now in paperback (hardback came out in late 2011).

The Poetry of Simon Armitage: A study guide for GCSE students
by Tony Childs

ISBN 9780571278251
Faber & Faber, June 2012, £6.99, pbk

Study notes on Simon Armitage's poems are strangely short on the ground - here's a critical guide for teachers and pupils, with sample essays.

...& TREATS FOR LIBRARIANS

faceBOOK
by Keith Pattison

Printed on demand by Blurb, pbk, £16.95, April 2012

'faceBOOK shows a library which is vital to the life of its community, and gives added punch to the fight to keep libraries everywhere alive and well and adequately funded' (Cllr Ann Schofield).  OK, it's not a poetry title, but this picture of one library's range of users is hard to resist.