The story
Coined by James Joyce in the experimental novel Finnegans Wake. Perhaps verbi- (from "verbiage"?) + Latin vocō ("to name") + visual, possibly influenced by Ezra Pound's Three Kinds of Poetry. Now frequently associated with Concrete poetry following its use by Augusto de Campos and other concrete poets in the mid-to-late 1950s.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.