"A Sort of Homecoming" is the first song of U2's 1984 album, The Unforgettable Fire. A live version of the track is found on 1985's four-track EP, Wide Awake in America. It is also the only song with lyrics inside the sleeve for the album.

As the opening track on The Unforgettable Fire, "A Sort of Homecoming" epitomises the new direction U2 had taken. A far more atmospheric album than the previous overt-rock of War, the album has a rich and orchestrated sound. Like much of the album, the song replaces the hard-hitting martial drum sound of War with a subtler polyrhythmic shuffle, and the guitar is no longer as prominent in the mix.

On the War Tour and leading up to recording The Unforgettable Fire, U2 lead singer and lyricist, Bono, had become a voracious reader. He read fiction, philosophy and poetry, and came to realise that his song-writing mission—which up to that point had been a reluctant one on his behalf—was a poetic one. He read works of poet Paul Celan, whose line "poetry is a sort of homecoming" inspired not just the song's title but the song itself. Celan's profound spiritual doubt contrasts with U2 members' previous religious certainties. The song's line "on borderlands we run...and don't look back" suggests the band had become more comfortable with the contradictions between rock and religious beliefs in comparison to during the October-War period. The phrase, "poetry is a sort of homecoming" had additional significance for Bono as a singer who was constantly away from home and travelling.

A film of U2 on tour in Northern Europe in October-November 1984 was made to accompany a live version of the song, which was used as a television video to promote The Unforgettable Fire album, showing the band on the road travelling through London, in France and the Low Countries, and in performance at several venues, including the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, West Germany, returning across the North Sea by ferry boat to the British Isles at the song's conclusion.

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