The Yale campus and the streets of New Haven will literally become a poem for a few hours on the afternoon of Friday, September 27. Spelled out in letters the size of human bodies, the word TRANSCULTURALISM will set out from Beinecke Library at precisely 3 p.m., breaking apart and reassembling to form other words as Alain Arias-Misson leads a group of 16 volunteers on a perambulatory route of poetic permutations past various symbolic sites across town. Alain has been staging his “Public Poems” since 1967, when he spelled the word VIETNAM in giant letters, wrapped in surgical bandages and splattered with red paint, before marching them out onto a busy square in Brussels and lashing them to the railing of a tram stop. What will happen at Yale? It’s anyone’s guess. A Public Poem “constellates the realia of the street, people, what they say, vehicles, buildings, etc.,” Arias-Misson wrote. “The material word is only the trigger.” The Yale Public Poem will culminate back at Beinecke Library, with the opening reception of the exhibition Beyond Words: Experimental Poetry & the Avant-Garde.