Even though he stopped writing poetry after being institutionalized at the age of 19, Nelligan remains an iconic figure in Quebec culture and was considered by Edmund Wilson to be the greatest Canadian poet in any language.

A follower of Symbolism, he produced poetry profoundly influenced by Octave Crémazie, Louis Fréchette, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Georges Rodenbach, Maurice Rollinat and Edgar Allan Poe.

In her 2013 book Le Naufragé du Vaisseau d'or, Yvette Francoli claimed that Louis Dantin, the publisher of Nelligan's poems, was in fact their real author.

[7] This claim was also previously advanced by Claude-Henri Grignon in his 1936 essay Les Pamphlets de Valdombre,[3] although Dantin himself denied having had anything more than an editing role in the poems' creation.

In 2016, the University of Ottawa's literary journal Analyses published an article by Annette Hayward and Christian Vandendorpe which rejected the claim, based on textual comparisons of the poetry credited to Nelligan with the writings of Dantin.

[8] Ce fut un grand Vaisseau taillé dans l'or massif:Ses mâts touchaient l'azur, sur des mers inconnues;La Cyprine d'amour, cheveux épars, chairs nues,S'étalait à sa proue, au soleil excessif.

Que reste-t-il de lui dans sa tempête brève?Qu'est devenu mon coeur, navire déserté?Hélas!

English-language translation/adaptation for "Nelligan, the Musical" by Michel Tremblay and Andre Gagnon A vessel of great might / Was hewn of solid gold / Masts billowed in the air / On seas beyond compare There Venus came in sight / Bare-skinned with tousled hair / Spread upon the prow for sunlight to behold But then came fateful night / A great reef sealed her doom / In the deceiving ocean / Wherein sirens sing Her hull was tilted forth / The wreck slipped tapering / Down to the chasm's depths / Toward a silent tomb A vessel hewn of gold / Diaphanous as air / Revealed its treasure hold / To vulgar sailors, there Disgust and Hate and Fear / Amongst themselves did rage / The vessel's gone amiss / In sudden storm it seems / What's happened to my heart, lost on the thankless waves?

Translation by Konrad Bongard The gypsum Jesus always stalled me in my stepsLike a curse at the old convent door;Crouching meekly, I bend to exalt an idolWhose forgiveness I do not implore.

But now, as I lie with knees bent beneath Christ's scaffold,I see his crumbling mortar crossWith its plaster buried in the roses, and am saddened - For if I listen close enough, I can almost hearThe sound of coal-black nails being wrung inTo his wrists, the savage piercing of Longinus' spear.