The contents are selected from 2,500 years of war poetry

The volume, entitled 101 Poems Against War, is being published on Wednesday by Faber and Faber.

Its editors spent three weeks selecting verse from 2,500 years of writings in English and many other languages.

The anthology includes works from Geoffrey Chaucer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Harold Pinter.

It is reputed to be one of the fastest productions of a new book.

Faber and Faber chief executive Stephen Page described it as "a passionate piece of publishing that responds to a change in the world at large".

Nobel nominee

"Writers and especially poets have always had strong views on the human experience of war, and we sought to gather them into this volume," Mr Page told The Independent newspaper.

As well as England and the US, the anthology brings together poets from Russia, the Czech republic, Germany, Poland, Nigeria, Japan and China.

There is also verse about Vietnam, Cambodia and Northern Ireland.

Contributors include the Nobel-nominated Israeli Yehuda Amichai, Iraq's Saadi Youssef and Nigerian Nnamdi Olebara.

The latest anthology also includes verse about the conflict in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, as well as works about the Gulf War and the 11 September attacks.

Poets have a long association with protest against war.

Last month the White House cancelled a poetry forum because of fears that it would be taken over by opponents of a possible war with Iraq.