Born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1951, Pedro Silva (his birth name) completed a dual degree in Library Science and Literature and later became a poet, assuming the pseudonym of Glauco Mattoso, a play on words emphasizing the condition of glaucoma, a congenital illness that would progressively lead to the author’s blindness in the early 1990s. In the 1970s, he was an essential member of the so-called "mimeographic generation" (a term that emphasized the amateur nature of the production of the early marginal poets). He also participated in the movement known as "marginal poetry," maximizing non-commercial networks of poetry, a refuge of "cultural resistance" used against the military dictatorship in power at that time. He created the fanzine "Jornal Dobrabil" (a pun on "Jornal Do Brasil," a daily newspaper, and the "foldable" format of a pamphlet published as independent sheets). He collaborated in various venues of the alternative press. With the loss of his sight, Mattoso abandoned creative visual work (such as his former production of concrete poetry, dactylographic art and comic stories) in order to dedicate himself to the composition of musical lyrics and classical sonnets.