WHAT happens to a former, retired Archbishop of Canterbury?

When you are Rowan Williams, you remain very much in the public eye and you voice your concerns, about where we are and where we are going, including at Ledbury: at the UK's largest poetry festival.

Dr Williams, who is now the Master of Magdalene at Cambridge, appeared on stage with writer, academic and fairy tale expert, Marina Warner, at Ledbury's Community Hall, on Tuesday, July 7.

The hall was packed, mainly with people who were middle-aged and older; and Dr Williams was to speak with the confidence of somehow who is used to hard questions from informed questioners, and who expects himself to have the answers.

Dr Williams was speaking on poetry and belief, and the churchman clearly believes there are connections, between religious faith and ritual, and the reading and benefits of verse.

Both, in the Williams universe, are ways to reach aspects of oneself that other activities simply cannot reach, (to paraphrase a well-known television beer advert); and both are important in a world which the churchman once described as "post Christian".

He said: "It is about making connections we don't make and don't understand. Poetry can sound strange and can seem not to make much sense."

The same, of course, can be said for organised religion, and Dr Williams read from the work of a favourite religious and modernist poet, David Jones, who described the priest at the altar as a kind of poet, and also as the last of his kind; the last survivor, perhaps, of Ancient Rome.

Is there a sense here, perhaps, that our world is also changing beyond recognition?

Dr Williams believes that using the human voice is a way of making something happen, such as a poem, or a religious ritual. It is a positive activity.

He said: "What it is to be human is to be making things different. Once again, the world is the same, but it is different."

Dr Williams spoke of the appeal of a hermit's life; but while he is eloquent when expressing the need for "time out", to find oneself again, he is less forthcoming, perhaps, on how this is to be achieved: in the age of the mobile phone, televised beer adverts, 24/7 demands and the digital cloud.

And what about those hard questions?

One member of the public asked Dr Williams, who is a published poet himself, why most poems are written in the first person, when poetry is often said to have a universal application, in the service of the human soul.

Dr Rowan said it was a very good question, which he would have to think about further.

But he mentioned TS Eliot's "The Wasteland", which is the result of the poet's nervous breakdown, so very personal, and is also a snap-shot of a civilisation in decline.

For Marina Walker, one of the great benefits of poetry, as with religion, is that words have the power to bless.

She said: "Hate speech is all pervasive. The concept of blessing takes many forms in poetry, and there is some sense of this being religious territory".

But she added: "Fair speech; wishing people well, doesn't have to be limited to that."