Greatly affected by the tragic Sewol Ferry incident of 2014, when more than 300 Koreans, mainly schoolchildren, lost their lives, Kim Hyesoon composed Autobiography of Death, a cycle of forty-nine poems – one for each day the dead must await reincarnation – to produce a deeply moving work for the children lost to this disaster. Kim speaks to Sonia Piscayanti about how we give a voice to death and trauma.