Poetry, photography and the duality of belonging
Photography by Silvi GlattauerWho is Daniel Sacchero?
Back in 1966, I was born in Lomas de Zamora, Argentina, one hot day in January. I grew up with my mother, my grandparents and my brothers in Burzaco, Buenos Aires Province, a train station on the Roca railway line.
My house had an eclectic library: magical realism, poetry from the Spanish Golden Age, fantastic tales, Argentine and European history, politics and revolution. Next to the bookshelves a record player with a collection of rock, pop, tango and Argentine folklore. On Sundays, River Plate matches on the radio with my grandfather close by.
Ever since I can remember I have read fiction and poetry. As a young student in a technical school, I began to write poems and to take black and white photographs. I turned a small storage area into a dark room to develop film and print photos.
I migrated to Australia at the age of nineteen, escaping compulsory military service: a lapidary 999 in the draft that would have sentenced me to the Navy for twenty-four months...
In Australia, great Spanish and Latin American poets continued to accompany me throughout my life, helping me to keep my language and identity alive.
In 1993, I met Silvi, my soulmate. We are inseparable from the first day we were together. We share our life with Rebeca and Jaime, our children. For us travelling is an important part of being alive, a way to learn, enjoy, accept and grow.
My fruit trees and veggie patch, riding my pushbike, fishing, camping, hiking, art, music, our books and my communities are all very important parts of my life. I am from there and I am from here.
Exploring Culture, People & Place Through Multimedia
Born in Argentina and living in Australia for over forty years, my poetry and photography explore themes of displacement, diaspora, identity, and the tension between my two homelands.
My creative projects are a fusion of photography, poetry and storytelling, offering a layered exploration of the cultures, identities and the spaces we inhabit. I move between different media, capturing the interaction between memory and landscape, immigration and belonging, stillness and movement, past and present. My poems try to express these dualities in clear and simple language. They speak from the Latin American immigrant experience, blending nostalgia with a deep appreciation for the cultural landscapes and stories of both past and present.
My photographic collections document vast and intimate landscapes, places that house layers of time, migration and stories. The accompanying photographs in my books are curated by Silvi Glattauer, my soulmate, a photographer and well known graphic artist. Many of them were taken during our trips together through rugged and wild landscapes in Australia, Africa and Latin America.
Since 2017 and stimulated by my participation in the readings in the A Voz Limpia (A Clean Voice) colective, images and poems began to group together, to outline a whole, to show a direction. With travel as the central motif my books, Distancia Cero (Zero Distance) and then Mapa de Ruta (Roadmap) talk about places where I feel part of the landscape. Places where others walked leaving their footprints. Places where the continuous march of time feels close to me. Both books were published by A Voz Limpia, an independent book publisher.
In my project A Vos Limpia - Su Gente, I portrait and interview Latin American artists living in Australia who are part of the group, discovering their creative journeys and the ways in which art becomes a bridge between worlds. At the core of my projects is the desire to connect and document, to give voice to the dialogue in constant evolution between myself and the people that surrounds me, the place where we are, the past and the present.
Photography by Silvi GlattauerBibliography
Books
2021 – Distancia Cero - Poetry in Spanish - Published by A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
2025 - Mapa de Ruta - Poetry in Spanish - Published by A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
Anthologies
2017 A Voz Limpia Vol. 2 A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
2018 A Voz Limpia Vol. 3 A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
2019 A Voz Limpia Vol. 4 A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
2019 Foliaje. A Voz Limpia y Revarena Ediciones. Melbourne, Australia y CDMX, México.
2020 A Voz Limpia Vol. 5 A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
2021 A Voz Limpia Vol. 6 A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
2022 A Voz Limpia Vol. 7 A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
2023 A Voz Limpia Vol. 8 A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
2024 A Voz Limpia Vol.9 A Voz Limpia. Melbourne, Australia.
Magazines
1993 Fusiones No. 4 Flinders University, South Australia.
2022 Nature Within and Around - Producido por A Voz Limpia para el Garden State Festival
Interviews
2021 SBS Radio El Rincon de los Libros te recomienda Distancia Cero
2022 Puentes Review - Daniel Sacchero - Distancia Cero