"Backwards" is a poem by writer Warsan Shire about familial strife and the desire to reverse time. First published in 2011 by flipped eye publishing, the poem appeared in Shire's collection Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth. Shire is a poet and activist born in Kenya to Somali parents; she grew up in London. Her work has appeared in several publications, including Poetry Review, Sable LitMag, and Long Journeys: African Migrants on the Road. She also contributed some of her poetry to Beyoncé Knowles' visual album Lemonade (2016). Shire's poetry often depicts the lives of refugees and immigrants, with a focus on trauma, healing, and love in the context of familial and romantic relationships. Her work also commonly features protagonists dealing with an intense emotional struggle. This particular poem is about a speaker who expresses a desire to redo her traumatic childhood. Working backwards through a series of moments, she discusses the various ways in which she would go back and make things different through writing.
The poem begins with her father returning, walking backwards into a room. Then the speaker describes the reversal of her and her sister's physical development, followed by a note about how she will make them loved. She then says she would make it so that anyone who sexually abused them would lose their hands, indicating that this was a traumatic aspect of their shared childhood. She describes her step-father spitting liquor back into a glass, her mother falling up the stairs, mending a bone, and not losing a child. She expresses support for her sister, saying that maybe they will be alright, as she will rewrite the past with an overwhelming amount of love.
The poem then repeats all of these lines, but in reverse order. It employs a unique structure in which the second stanza is the same as the first stanza, but all the lines are in reverse order, replaying them in the opposite direction. This has the effect of actually showing these images backwards, reconfiguring the reader's understanding of and reaction to them. This poem tells the story of abuse Shire and her family experienced after her biological father walked out on them and her step-father took over. "Backwards" indicates her desire to go back in time when her father was still around and abuse did not dominate her life. This formal inventiveness serves the poem well, as it shows the speaker dwelling on past trauma, attempting to revisit and undo the harm that has been done to her and her family.
