Following a line of list poems from Whitman through to Carver, Professions began its apprenticeship as a set reflecting on a small range of occupations – undertaken by Ferguson / on their receiving end – evolving to this sequence of prose poems on a wider world of those who ply differing trades. Unashamed in the use of jobbing puns, linked threads accompany satirical to shrewd views on the art and artifice of these livelihoods.