James Brown's six poetry collections – Go Round Power Please (winner of the Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award), Lemon, Favourite Monsters, The Year of the Bicycle, Warm Auditorium and, most recently, Floods Another Chamber (2017) – are all published by Victoria University Press. His selected poems will be published by VUP in 2020

His poetry is widely anthologised, including in numerous editions of Best New Zealand Poems. James is also a former editor of the literary magazine Sport, the author behind the non-fiction booklet Instructions for Poetry Readings, editor of The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape (Craig Potton Publishing, 2005) and of Best New Zealand Poems 2008

His three early reader books, My New Zealand ABC Book, My New Zealand Colours Book, and My New Zealand 123 Book (Te Papa Press, 2014), were among the children's books selected by author Kate De Goldi in 2018 as a gift to the newborn Prince Louis of Cambridge from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

James has been the recipient of several fellowships including the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, the Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary and Writer in Residence Fellowships at Canterbury University and Victoria University of Wellington. He has been the recipient of . He has been a finalist in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards three times. He has a BA in English from Massey University with Honours from Victoria University of Wellington, and works as a freelance writer and editor