Gunars Saliņš (21 April 1924 – 29 June 2010) was a modernist poet within the Latvian lyric poetry tradition.
[1] In his youth, he was inspired by the Latvian poet Aleksandrs Čaks and later by writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Guillaume Apollinaire, Federico García Lorca, and Dylan Thomas.
Saliņš' imagery playfully explored transformational and metaphysical elements in this world and beyond, often incorporating his personal experiences with allusions to myth, art, and ancient Latvian folklore—a process he referred to as "orpheism".
Gunars Saliņš's poetry was widely circulated within the Latvian diaspora post-WWII; later, his work was rediscovered and championed in Latvia in the post-Soviet era.
After spending five years in a displaced persons' camp in Augsburg, Germany, they were granted permission to emigrate to the United States, eventually settling in New Jersey.