MA Creative Writing graduate Kaddy Benyon has beaten 100 poets from across the world to jointly take the prestigious Crashaw Prize with Luke Heely from Lincolnshire.

The international poetry prize, now entering its fourth year, recognises the best debut full-length collections in English and receives entries from the UK, US, Ireland and Australasia. Due to be published by Salt in November 2012, her collection of poems Milk Fever was inspired by her relationships with older women who have shaped her.

Chris Hamilton-Emery, director of Salt Publishing, said: "The imagery and music of Benyon's language is matched with an extraordinary range in this debut collection and we are delighted to make it a winner in this year's prize."

Kaddy said: "I don't think my feet have touched the ground since I heard. It is validation for what I do. There is not a whole load of money in the world of poetry so the fact that the judges think my poems are good is amazing."

Prior to studying at Anglia Ruskin, Kaddy was a successful television scriptwriter, having penned 70 episodes of Hollyoaks for Channel 4.

Describing her inspiration for Milk Fever, Kaddy said "The first inklings of Milk Fever came on a flight from Texas to London after a wedding in 2009. I was travelling with my four-year old daughter.

"The plane hit turbulence as we clipped the corner of Kansas and without taking her eyes from the film, my daughter clung to me with a sticky, lolly-poppy hand and was instantly soothed. I had such a strong urge to do the same to a polished lady sitting on my other side.

"To distract myself, I tried to think of all the older women who have shaped me. When I counted 13 on my fingers - no, I don't have extra digits! - I decided to write a sequence of 13 poems under the awful title, Meet My Other Mothers. By the time we landed, the first draft of a tiny, tentative poem had formed. The collection grew and evolved from there.

"Milk Fever took two years to write - though of course there were days when I got lost, lost faith, gave up, stamped my feet, ripped pages up and shook a fist at my muse. But there were also the times when editors of literary magazines accepted some of the Milk Fever poems, or they were placed in competitions or an audience responded with applause when I read.

"I am currently writing my second collection, Touchstone, which explores my relationship to a single pebble; the person who gave it to me; what it means to feel touched, beyond the physical; our attempts to control our impermanence; and how human beings use objects as surrogates for experience."

Following her success, Kaddy has been interviewed by both Cambridge News and BBC Cambridgeshire, in whcih she thanked Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Dr Colette Paul for her encouraging her to get into poetry.

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