This past weekend, one of Ottawa’s celebrated reading series played host to one of the city’s former residents made good. Author Peter Norman spent three years here at the beginning of his career and found them to be incredibly formative. “I got off the ground in poetry there. It was in that community that I started to write with concentration. I’d write for the open mic nights at reading series and then use the feedback to see what captured peoples’ attention.” He left Ottawa but took with him a long list of friends, supporters and burgeoning projects. “I did a tally once,” he muses, “and about 63 percent of my poems were written in Ottawa.”