James Kelman at the Samuel Beckett Centre Launch

The Samuel Beckett Centre is establishing conversations around the legacy of Beckett’s work with creative artists across all genres and media. We're pursuing ways of reconceiving his writing in the 21st century by using the University's extensive archival materials on Beckett as inspiration for the creation of new drama, prose fiction, music, and visual art.

As an exciting marker of this initiative, the Centre was launched in May 2017 with a lecture by the Scottish novelist James Kelman. The Booker Prize winning author of nine novels, as well as short stories and plays, adopts a similarly radical view to Beckett’s about the writer’s need to challenge linguistic and social convention, reconsider the writer’s relation to nationhood, and use fiction to explore philosophical and political ideas.

James reflects on the origin of his own awareness of Beckett’s work, on what he sees as the strengths and weaknesses of Beckett’s writing, and the lessons that might be learnt by contemporary writers from Beckett. The whole launch event can be viewed below, with James Kelman's talk starting at 13'42".

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