The Nature of Things is a celebration of the relationship between poetry and the New Zealand landscape. It matches a wide range of poems that in some way evoke or describe our landscape, with images from the pre-eminent New Zealand photographer Craig Potton. The poems have been selected and the introduction written by James Brown, one of New Zealand's leading contemporary poets.

The Nature of Things includes work from many of the central figures of New Zealand poetry, both historical and contemporary, to create a hugely appealing, accessible and original anthology of New Zealand poetry.

James Brown is a freelance writer and editor. He is a past recipient of the Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary and was Writer in Residence at Canterbury University in 2001 and at Victoria University in 2004. His poetry collections are Go Round Power Please (1995), which won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry, Lemon (1999) and Favourite Monsters (2002). A new collection, The Year of the Bicycle, is forthcoming from VUP. He lives in Wellington with his partner and two children.

Craig Potton is a noted New Zealand photographer and conservationist. Born in Nelson, New Zealand, he gained degrees in Eastern Religion and English, then, after a brief teaching career, began working full-time for the conservation movement. He remains actively involved in conservation work more than thirty years later. Craig is the founder and owner of Craig Potton Publishing, a company based in Nelson.