The main focus of this paper is the theoretical basis of visuality in poetry, with a special review of Croatian production of visual poems. To resolve the question of visuality, the most common way is to put it in the context of intermediality, which brings up a few key notions that help us understand the term of visual poetry: medium, the relation of media, communication, recipient, synchrony, senses and coding. When considering these terms, one needs to explain the interference of text and pictures from a semiotic point of view, which then brings to light their connection in terms of both having a role of signs. By analyzing the corpus, the incentives for the development of visual poetry can be dated in the avant-garde, and further evolution includes a wide range of graphic experiments involving calligrams and appropriation of ready-made products. Regarding the assumption of the recipient's position, possible ways of reading visual poems were also presented and then extended due to the circumstances brought about by conceptual art. The nature of visual poetry might also spark its exuberant development under the umbrella of (post)conceptual art.