Carol Ann Duffy visited Singapore a few years ago, and she read her own poem, Mrs Midas ,to the audience during per presentation.

• The ancient Greek foundational story of Midas:

1. He was a very rich and powerful king
2. He was obsessed with his money, his gold
3. He once had the chance to wish one thing from the God Dionysus (the god of wine and pleasure), because he was kind to his old teacher
4. Despite Dionysus’s all warning, he wished that everything he touches would become gold
5. He first enjoyed this, but then realised that he cannot eat, cannot smell a rose with touching it anymore
6. He hugged her beloved daughter and she turned to gold
7. Midas begged Dionysus to help him and turn the things back how they were
8. The God helped him, and after, Midas learned that there are more important things on Earth than money and gold

• 11 verse written in sestets
• Dramatic monologue
• Rhymes, para rhymes, half rhymes
• Written in a colloquial and conversational way (she talks as if she would tell the story to a friend/her teraphyst)
• A main takeaway is be careful about what you wish + money is not everything
• Midas though he would be more powerful with more money, but he ended up living miserably alone in the wild with nothing but his ‘precious gold’ (becoming worthless to him)
• Modern take on the story: he is the money seeking guy in expensive clothes going around in expensive luxury cars -> she sees the idiocy in it
• Her main problem is that amidas’ selfishness, stupidity and carefulness ended their relationship, their marriage, he cannot touch her anymore and they will never have a child together 
• She moves on at the end and leaves him living in an abandoned place alone, only surrounded by the things he turned  into gold (-> as a sign of his misktake)