Devotion: a poetic inquiry into affective infrastructure

This poem and commentary explore how small, habitual gestures – such as a child waving at a rusted pipe on the walk to school – can constitute a form of affective infrastructure. Through a combination of poetry and critical commentary, it traces how everyday acts of noticing, repetition and relational attention shape our emotional experience of urban space. Drawing on recent work in emotional and affective geographies, the piece argues that such gestures are not trivial but infrastructural: they stabilise attachments, generate meaning and cultivate a form of urban care. The poem operates not as an illustration of theory but as a mode of inquiry in its own right, foregrounding embodied, situated knowledge that resists abstraction. The commentary situates this poetic practice within broader debates around creative methods, affect and the micrologics of the city, making the case for devotion – both as theme and as method – as a form of geographic understanding.